Dinner was a lot. Vicky made a speech as she pinned on my brass bar, something something courage and honor and Earth's finest defenders. I could barely pay attention, I was so excited. I'm just gd I remembered when to salute and to bow and to shake hands.

  Still have nervous energy to burn after that, and it's nowhere near dark, near bedtime, so I'm in my room. The Padin quarters are a little deeper in the complex, not in the main barracks, closer to the Round Table building.

  More private. A shocking amount of room, with a desk, and a pce to put my clothes, and it's own bathroom.

  I've taken off my formal uniform and am just shrugging into jean overalls when I hear the knock at my door.

  "It's not locked," I say. "Come in."

  I hear the door open and clip my shoulder straps on when I look up, and see my brother Isaac in the doorway, adjusting the brim of his cap so I could see his eyes behind his gsses.

  And I tense up.

  "Hello, sister mine," he says, and he makes it sound so sad.

  “What do you need, Zak?” I ask, fighting to keep my hands at my sides instead of crossed.

  He hesitates before answering. “To give you two things; an apology and a gift.”

  And I feel like I’ve been so stupid and cruel at those words that all I can say is a sheepish “come in.”

  "Thank you," he says, one step of long legs bringing him to the center of the room, where he puts his hand on the desk chair. "May I sit?"

  I nod.

  Rather than sit normally, he spins it, resting his chest against the back of the chair, spying his legs to either side. He caught some shrapnel to his back early in the ONI experiments; his back doesn't like normal chairs very much.

  "I've been bullheaded," he begins, "about your choice to fight. Called you reckless, called it senseless. Because I'm afraid for you."

  "You should see the other guy," I say with an attempt at a smile.

  He sighs. "You know," he mutters, "these bunks used to be for culinary students back when this pce was a Job Corps? Those on track to graduate from being excellent cooks to being true chefs, masters of kitchens who not only cooked but wrote menus."

  "It's still an important job," I say, thinking back to any number of meals Meredith directed her kids to make for us, how seldom we've gone hungry under her care. And how often we did before joining the Treasure Isnd Resistance.

  "But no longer the one in the most esteem," he says. "That honor goes to... you. The fighters. The Padins, as our would be Charles the Great would have you. The threat of the aliens, the Invaders, of violence is too great for it to be otherwise."

  I grip the edge of the bed tighter. "And you wish I lived in a world where cooks were more important than mechajocks."

  "I have always wished that for you," Isaac says. "But it's time to stop bming you for the world being as it is, rather than as it should be. And to help you bridge the difference. Hold out your hand."

  I nod, and I do.

  He pces something heavy in my hand, a strip of it cold, the rest of it warm. Strips of metal folded into a wood handle, a little hooking button.

  I thumb the button, and a bde pops out of the top of the handle, blunt side up and out. Flicking the handle doesn't move it; I need to press the bde back into the stock to close it.

  "Thank you," I say, knowing this is important, even if I'm a little puzzled about why a knife.

  "You can use it for almost anything," Isaac notes, with a brittle smile under the reflection off his gsses. "Cutting up food, whittling wood, opening jars... and, of course, the use I hope you never need it for."

  "But will save my life, if I ever do need it for that," I say, and sigh. "I hope I never do either."

  I pocket his gift of a knife and hug my brother, and after a moment, he hugs me back.