//------------------------------//
// Home? 
// Story: Homeworld Conflict 
// by Lily Lain 
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The camera turned toward the ambassador unit’s speaker, who sat in a corner by himself throughout the whole meeting, and did his best to remain in the background. His face hidden in his hands, he breathed slowly.
 
Someone entered the room, seemingly an uninvited guest. His footsteps on the metal floor seemed to match perfectly with the beating of the speaker’s heart. They were haste, in different intervals, as if they were made by a person who had no intention of reaching any place on time, and was hurrying somewhere at once.
 
“Speaker?” Fleet Command called.
 
He shook his head as if he awoke from a slumber. “I am at your disposal, Fleet Command.” He looked at the newcomer curiously.
 
“It’s the gunner of Augury. His insight has proven remarkable in the past, just as yours has. I wish to know your opinion.”
 
The gunner of Augury he most certainly was not, didn’t have a uniform on him. It was doubtful whether he even was a Kushan, as the long, warm coat he wore would never hint on the deserts of Kharak as its place of origin. Nonetheless, if Fleet Command decided he could be trusted, there was no reason to doubt her.
 
The speaker stood up and walked closer to the screen, looking straight at one of the cameras. “I believe Fleet Intelligence has a far more educated opinion to pro—”
 
“Fleet Intelligence can’t hear you. The room has been muffled.”
 
The speaker then fell silent, judging the situation. He looked questioningly at the “gunner.” The latter only smiled and found a place to sit. To the speaker’s surprise he fished out a cigarette, a real, not an electric one, and lit it. The cigarette, instead of filling the gunner’s lungs with nicotine, flew to the floor and flattened obediently under his shoe’s abuse.
 
“I disabled all the smoke detectors here for the time being,” announced Fleet Command the slightest tinge of a bell’s ringing in her voice told she was amused.
 
The gunner glowered at the cameras.
 
The speaker, in turn, seated himself too. His heart was settling down, he even chuckled at the situation. “Is this Hiigara?” he asked, looking more at the newcomer than the cameras or the screen.
 
The newcomer, however, said nothing. “We are sure our race has been here. We are sure the Guidestone pointed to the world that led us here. We don’t know if it’s Hiigara.” Fleet Command, although her voice was almost inhumanely level, sounded lost to the speaker, who’d heard that voice indefinitely for the length of the Journey.
 
“We’re not sure. We’re betting far too much on that card. I’ve never supported pointless hazard,” said the speaker.
 
“How pointless do you believe the hazard is?” The cameras turned toward the gunner to indicate it was his turn at an answer.
 
He stood up from his seat and looked straight at the cameras. “We both know how high the hazard is,” he said. “And something tells me you’ll be giving me work, much more than I’d rather handle.”
 
The speaker stood up too and started pacing back and forth, cameras following him closely. “What are we doing here? What are we, explorers or conquerors? Are the Equines as dangerous as the Taiidan Empire that it’s so important to hold them at a gunpoint?”
 
“Perhaps at least one of you can realise how helpless the situation is.” She left them a moment for thought. The gunner nodded, but said nothing, the speaker didn’t notice his gesture.
 
“Have you thought what would happen,” she addressed the speaker more than the gunner this time, “if we were to leave?”
 
They remained silent.
 
“This is the only lead we have. We have nowhere left to go, and if this is Hiigara, we must find our place here.”
 
“But there is no place here!” he shouted. “We look for our place, we don’t shuffle back everyone who wishes to live there. It’s not only our planet, Fleet Command.
 
“If a war were to start here, it’d take many, many lives. Countless more than our own wars would. They’re not prepared to face us. Not today. It’d be a genocide!” The speaker then retreated back a step, realising what he’d said. To Fleet Command no less.
 
“The records of this place might be kept. Even if we try to forget, our children might come here with an armada greater than ours, and raze this world.”
 
The speaker nodded. “There is no answer then, Fleet Command, but to stay. What if a war breaks out?”
 
“Don’t you believe in our ability to coexist with other species?”
 
He chuckled. “Ability to coexist? We can’t coexist with ourselves, and we didn’t even know there were any ‘other species’ at all when we started the journey! We’ll be drawn into a war sooner or later.”
 
“We will do our best to avoid it.”
 
“Sometimes best is not enough.” The speaker saluted and left the room. The door opened as he walked and closed deafly behind him, leaving dull silence.
 
“What should I do then? What is there left to do?”
 
“I’d hate to be the person to say this,” the gunner picked up the cigar he had earlier flattened and stuffed it in his pocket. “But, well, do what you think is right at the moment. Each action has consequences: count the numbers, choose the most probable one. Integrate as many factors as you know, and simply calculate.”
 
“The lives it might take, the suffering it might cause...”
 
The liquid cooling the computers of the Mothership boiled, as numerous factors were implemented. Each Kushan can have a family, each Griffin, each Equine, each Minotaur, a blast from a Ion Cannon can turn a whole city to ash. Whole city. That would be thousands of Equines, or Griffins, or Minotaurs, thousands of families, incomplete, or killed, children orphaned, wives widowed, husbands killed...
 
Focused, she didn’t pay attention to the steps that resonated deafly through the room. The gunner left. There was a slam of a door closing, not a ship door, but door of something else. Then a roar of an old engine. He was gone.