“I am tired of this, Gérard,” Fleet Admiral Reyes sighed as they stepped into her ready room, returned from the vigil where they’d committed 1,147 heroes to the deep. “How many more times do we have to go through this? How many more do we have to bury?”

She was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and she slumped onto the couch without so much as offering him a seat. She was done. Just so fucking done. From the Dominion War to today, it just never let up. Always more souls lost. So many she could hardly count.

“I thought you did an excellent job with the vigil, Allison,” Fleet Captain Gérard Devreux offered as he took a seat across from the couch. “It was quite touching. A good send off.”

“Lord knows I’ve had enough practice,” Fleet Admiral Reyes frowned. “But you see, that’s the problem. It just keeps happening, again and again. When does it stop?”

“The Vaadwaur have turned tail, and the Wall appears to be holding,” Fleet Captain Devreux reminded her, noting she was uncharacteristically torn up. He’d never seen her like this before. She was usually their rock, whether for good or not. “It appears it’s over for now.”

“For now,” Fleet Admiral Reyes punctuated. “You see, that’s exactly the problem. There’s always a next time, a next war to be fought, a next sacrifice to be made, more young sailors to send off to die…” Her words trailed off as one came to mind. “And older soldiers too.”

“You’re referring to Lewis, aren’t you?” Fleet Captain Devreux inferred. Allison Reyes and Jake Lewis had always been close, a bond between shooters forged decades prior. They relied on each other, but he always wondered if they made each other better… or worse.

“I’ve sent him off to die more times than I can count, but he’s always come home,” Fleet Admiral Reyes lamented as her eyes drifted to the window, thinking back to Algorab, to Nasera, to Earth, and to so many other desperate hail marys he’d pulled off. “At some point, you just get used to the fact he always makes it back.” But this time he hadn’t. This time, he’d gone out in a blaze of glory, a conflagration of deuterium and antideuterium annihilations. “He’s always been my secret weapon, the one who’d get the job done no matter what.”

“And he got the job done this time too,” Fleet Captain Devreux acknowledged. Captain Lewis had sacrificed himself and his crew to ensure they saw victory. The thing, though, was that maybe it hadn’t had to happen. He’d had plenty of time to reflect since the Vaadwaur pulled back, and there was something bothering him about all of this. “Permission to speak freely?”

The request caught Fleet Admiral Reyes off guard. In the many years they’d served together, she’d never known Devreux to do anything but speak his mind, but that he’d had to ask, it told her that she wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “Of course. What’s on your mind?”

“Have you ever considered that your unwavering belief in your heroes taints your ability to keep them safe?” Fleet Captain Devreux asked pointedly. “Or that the way you put such heroes on a pedestal, it inspires others under you to take unnecessary risks?”

“Lewis would have gone and done it either way,” Fleet Admiral Reyes countered. In fact, he’d been the architect of the entire mission beyond the galactic plane. The rest of them had just been along for the ride.

“What about Dorian?” Fleet Captain Devreux raised an eyebrow.

She looked at him quizzically.

“You let him charge ahead to K’t’inga without support, and thank god they gritted it out by the skin of their teeth, but just think for a second,” Fleet Captain Devreux explained. “We could have entered the fight together, and it would have been far safer.”

“But their timely intervention mattered,” Fleet Admiral Reyes insisted. By getting there when they did, they prevented those Vaadwaur gunshots and cruisers from bombarding K’t’inga III.

“Did it?” Fleet Captain Devreux probed. “Did it really?” If this had really been about saving lives, in the aftermath, why’d she order them to focus on the soldiers and the weapons rather than the civilians and the cities?

“Yes, it did,” Fleet Admiral Reyes replied firmly. “It saved lives.” She didn’t see the irony.

“But it almost cost us six hundred and fifty, and it was only dumb luck they survived,” Fleet Captain Devreux pushed. If they’d arrived at K’t’inga even thirty seconds later, the Alita class cruiser would have been cut to shreds. “It’s more than that though, Allison. Imagine if the Diligent hadn’t been with us in the battle beyond the galactic plane, or when we moved to take back Archanis?” That was the part she wasn’t seeing. “Captain Vox and his crew might’ve died heroes in the moment, but we might have lost far more in the end.”

“I suppose you have a point,” Fleet Admiral Reyes acknowledged. “But what of Lewis? Even if I had wanted to change the plan… even if I’d had more ships to send… we couldn’t even get in touch with him. The die had been cast.”

“This time, sure, but that goes to my second point,” Fleet Captain Devreux replied. “You inspire people to go for it, to be the hero, just as you want to be.”

“We need them to rise when called.”

“Yes, but thoughtfully,” Fleet Captain Devreux countered. “There’s a time for a suicide run, but there’s also a time for not. One need not default to going out in a blaze of glory.”

“Gérard, if you’re trying to cheer me up, you’re doing a shit job of it.”

“I’m just trying to give you another way of looking at it,” Fleet Captain Devreux offered. “Because if you keep doing it this way, you’re going to keep burying your friends.”

And someday, it would probably kill her too.