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the room for another vacant seat. Nothing remained except a broken bench propped against a bare wall. Resigning himself to staying put, he dropped his forehead to his desk and tried to clear the haze from his mind. Whoever had scheduled debate for this early in the morning deserved a commute through an asteroid belt.
    “I am Mr. Xioxang,” a man’s deep voice cut through the haze. Dane lifted his head to find gold eyes tearing into his skull. Red teacher’s robes draped the man’s towering frame, and a slick hood outlined the sharpness of his face. In his left hand, he held a pen and a dark notebook. “Who can tell me why the Alliance is the greatest nation in the universe?”
    Dane looked away. This was why he hated school. It was full of opinions presented as fact. Around him a mass of hands sprang into the air. Eager fledglings anxious to impress the hawk.
    Ignoring the hands, Xioxang swept forward. His curved fingers landed with a sharp rap on the desk of a girl filing her painted-green fingernails. She dropped the file and shot the teacher an offended look. “What?”
    Dane recognized her from the day before, Sean or Dawn or something like that.
    The teacher frowned. “Need I repeat the question, Miss Entera?”
    She gave an unsubtle glance in Dane’s direction, as if checking to make sure he was listening, then straightened her shoulders. “The reason the Alliance is great is because of the Manifest.” Yvonne: that was her name.
    “Why the Manifest?” the teacher probed. “How can a document make a nation great?”
    It can’t, Dane thought. That’s why your initial question is flawed.
    Yvonne pursed her gloss-covered lips. “It isn’t the document itself, but the mission stated on it.”
    “What mission?” Xioxang drew closer.
    She tossed her black hair over her shoulder. “The mission to create peace and stability by bringing every planet into the Alliance.”
    He groaned inwardly. The Manifest doesn’t say that.The mission is to unify all the planets, not absorb them.
    Mouth curved downward, the teacher made a sharp mark in his notebook, then slapped his palm on the abandoned nail file and snapped it in half.
    Yvonne stiffened and opened her mouth as though to protest.
    But the teacher had already swept away. He crossed to the back of the room and confronted a plain, skinny girl hiding behind a curtain of straight brown hair and a history text. “How?” demanded Xioxang. “How does the Alliance intend to spread lasting peace?”
    Her response was soft but surprisingly quick. “Through equal rights and fair government.”
    Dane frowned. Not that he disliked the Manifest’s ideals, but they were ideals. He couldn’t have listed the number of times the Council had sidestepped them in favor of growth.
    “Plagiarism is not worth any points in this classroom.”
    Xioxang lifted his pen to make another mark in his notebook.
    But the girl lowered her text. “Then I disagree with the author’s opinion, sir.”
    The pen froze. “How?”
    She tucked her hair behind an ear. Dark eyes looked out of her solemn face into his penetrating stare. “If . . . if the Alliance believes in equal rights, why does it allow slavery to occur on X-level planets?”
    Now there was a question.
    The teacher once again lifted his pen. “That’s a detail that would fit better in a later discussion.”
    “I doubt the slaves on those planets see it as a detail,” she blurted, her voice growing louder.
    “The Alliance cannot impose its moral code on a planet that is not a member,” said Xioxang.
    Right. Like that never happened.
    The loose folds of the girl’s uniform shifted over her thin torso, and her skin took on a rusty red shade. “The Alliance seems to have done so with any number of planets throughout its history.” She gestured at her lowered textbook.
    Dane was not tired now. His mind fastened on the argument.
    Instead of admitting defeat, the teacher changed his tactic. “X-level planets are so