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of sheltering a Shaldean cell leader. While investigating his whereabouts, a mob of loyal Shaldean sympathizers attacked them with nothing more than daggers and farming tools. Dale’s unit suppressed the village uprising. Some were shot and the others scattered. The village was left with only a handful of frightened women and children.
    Contrary to the expectations of those who knew him, and to his own expectations most of all, Dale excelled in the Academy environment. He didn’t enjoy the daily regimen of training, but he developed into a good soldier. His superiors took notice and before long, Dale was given broader areas of responsibility. Once in the field, he discovered that he flourished in the heat of a fight. Coming off the adrenaline highs, he quietly reveled in the courage he did not know he had. But there was no reveling in taking another’s life. Once he had shot the young Shaldean and sent him across that irreversible line, he discovered it became easier to send others. The act became easier, but the ease became unsettling.
    “If it wasn’t them, it would’ve been us,” his fellow soldiers reasoned.
    For Dale, it wasn’t so simple. Dale had always been content with ambiguity when it came to questions of faith and religion. In the midst of his duties as a soldier, to remain ambiguous grew increasingly uncomfortable. Despite a context in which killing was sanctioned, even justified, he couldn’t help but feel a growing, looming judgment from some cosmic judicial system that would one day summon him to settle accounts. The feeling, corroborated by his conscience, would not leave Dale alone. He began to question the Republic’s policies.
    What rights, if any, did the Republic have on Emmainite land?
    He began to question himself—who he had become.
    Dale’s career in the Republican Guard ended the same year his father passed away. Stationed in a remote Loreland outpost along the Saracen, Dale was unable to attend the funeral. He mourned alone. And it was then that he decided he was going to resign.
    Days before his decommissioning and scheduled departure, Darius visited him in Pharundelle.
    “You’re making a mistake, Dale.”
    “Maybe.”
    “No, you are. After you’ve worked all these years, you’re just going to give up now?”
    “I’m not giving up. I’m moving on.”
    “To do what?”
    Stuffing his duffle bag with what little possessions he had, Dale replied, “I’m going to take over Dad’s breaker.”
    “Dad’s breaker? What the hell do you know about running a business?”
    “Nothing yet.”
    “Dad poured his life into that thing so we wouldn’t have to live like him. So we could have opportunities he didn’t have. You want to do something for him, make captain.”
    “I don’t want to make captain and I’m not doing this for him. You make it sound like wanting to live a quiet life is asking too much.”
    “Not too much. Too little. A quiet life isn’t living, Dale. Life is about being a part of something greater than yourself. It’s about sacrifice.”
    It was regurgitated propaganda straight from the Republican Guard’s cadet training. Dale knew it well. There was a time when he believed every word.
    “Well, that’s not what I’m about. I’m not like you.”
    In the early years at the Academy, Dale had begun to suspect that he and Darius were very different. After graduation, as he began to serve, the difference grew increasingly apparent. Dale knew that if he stayed with the Guard, it would be for different reasons than his older, more ambitious brother. When Dale began to grapple with the moral implications of his career, there was no doubt that he and Darius were destined to take divergent paths. He wasn’t a warrior. At least not in the way Darius seemed to embody it. A major at twenty-eight, Darius was the consummate soldier. He followed orders well. He was competent, dutiful, and a natural-born leader. And when he killed in the line of duty, he did not seem to