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closely mirrored my own.  Unlike my shoulder length, black, wavy locks, I noticed that my father’s close cut hair was starting to show flecks of grey.  He looked tired, more anxious than I ever remember seeing him.  More than that, he simply looked old and it came as a sudden shock to me that my father was almost seventy.  It was the first time that I realised that he wasn’t going to live forever and that one day I would have to go on without him; to step into his shoes and to make the sort of life-and-death decisions that he had just so recently made.
    That thought brought me up short, reminding me of my purpose in his study and I leaned forward, placing both of my palms on his desk, trying to use my height to intimidate him.  I could have laughed at the foolishness of it.  Nothing intimidated him.  I could have been High-Lord Zhang and still my father wouldn’t have moved a muscle.  Instead he just continued to stare at me, waiting for me to speak.
    “What gives you the right to order the destruction of a ship with thirty souls on-board?  Who made you God?  Or have you started to imagine that you really are a High-Lord now and have decided to join their little cabal?  What are you planning on doing next, hosting a little soirée and inviting them all around for High Tea?” I demanded, aghast at the rancour in my own voice.  I had never spoken to my father in such a tone before.
    “I never ordered anything,” my father refuted calmly.  “It’s not my place to go making those sort of decisions, they rest with the Planetary Administrator, all they asked for was my recommendation, which I duly gave.”
    “Don’t give me that nonsense,” I interrupted, making a slashing motion with my hand.  “The company assigned Planetary Administrator is over eighty-five years old, completely senile and only makes it out of his bed for an hour a day. He spends most of his time drooling over—”
    “But he does get out of bed,” my father interjected, proving that he also was able to cut me off in mid-sentence.
    “—his buxom, blond, twenty-five year old nurse, whose uniform looks like she has just finished a lengthy S&M session.”
    “You’re only saying that because you’re jealous that she refused to kiss you in tenth grade,” my father grunted.  “Trust me when I say that she’s not suitable for you and you would be bored of her within a fortnight.  You need somebody to challenge you, my boy.”
    I blinked, narrowing my eyes at him and was about to retort that it was none of his business when I snapped my mouth shut.  He was trying to change the topic.  “Stop trying to change the subject, you knew that the Tower was going to follow your advice, so why?”
    My father sighed, looking away for the first time ever.  I should have felt vindicated, but instead it simply depressed me further, another reminder of his advancing years.  “I only recommended that they use force as a last resort, to compel the freighter to turn back.  I assume that they fired on it after exhausting every other possible avenue, we couldn’t let the ship approach Arcturus.”
    “But why?”
    “The Virus has already reached Canis Major.”
    Its official name was Sagouran Fever, where the first official case had been recorded, but now everybody simply referred to it as the ‘Virus’.  After the first five hundred million had died, everybody knew which virus that you were talking about.  I felt like somebody had planted a fist in my stomach and I struggled to breathe, falling back into a chair, lest I collapsed on the floor.
    “But that’s the adjoining system, it’s barely a light-year away.”
    My father simply nodded, looking at me with deeply hooded eyes.  “I didn’t simply recommend that the Orion intercept this freighter, my recommendation was that it intercepts all incoming ships.  Similarly, all outbound traffic will now be turned back.”
    “You’re talking about quarantining Arcturus.”
    “Yes.