Red cloth banners lined the walls of the hall, covering the brushed metal and muffling the cries that somehow still echoed through the room. There were so many people there. Throngs of people had flocked to Freo following the fight with the Council. I’m not sure if it was the fact the Council broke Interplanetary agreements or that they killed so many people.

We’d already had funerals earlier in the week for some of the others who were killed in the fight but we’d had to put off this one. Too many people wanted to attend for Tuc and Gem. We couldn’t even have it in the usual room, that was too small and there were too many crammed in behind us anyway. We’d had to have it in the dining hall. The tables had been cleared out and rows of benches with a thin aisle between them lined the hall.

I didn’t recognise most of the people there. There were so many faces I didn’t know and even more watching the stream from their own planets. It felt strange that Gem’s funeral was being televised but Tuc would have wanted his to be.

My eyes fell on the grey-haired, balding man on the opposite side of the aisle. His red, watery eyes were fixed on Tuc’s pod. Every so often he let out a heart-wrenching sob. He was Tuc’s father, Tyler, Elliot had introduced us earlier. He was in a wheelchair next to him, helping to fill out the empty space where the rest of Tuc’s family should be.

Andy had explained earlier in hushed tones that Tuc’s mom had chosen not to come. That despite everything that had been happening on Nova, the revolts and campaigns against the Council, she had decided to stay. He had no one else.

We were on Gem’s side. Cory stood closest to the aisle, in the place of her partner, and the rest of us sat next to him. His gaze was distant, not fixed on her pod which would transport her out into the stars where she would roam forever, but on the wall behind it. He wasn’t crying. His tired eyes were glassy and I could tell that his mind was elsewhere.

I wished that mine was. My eyes kept flicking back to Gem’s pod. It had a picture of her and someone had covered it with ribbons and flowers. Tuc’s was adorned too. The large metal casket was covered in screens showing endless slideshows of his face. Pictures of him from movies and television shows, press events and more recent photos of him around Freo. In every photo, he was smiling confidently but there was one I couldn’t look away from.

He was sitting in a dark, dingy hall that I immediately recognised to be an orphanage. It was barely lit but happiness radiated out from Tuc’s face as he stared down in wonder at the thin baby balanced on his knee. She was dressed in a plain grey onesie, clearly orphanage issued, and I knew she must have been his daughter Anya. A woman sat next to him, her head thrown back in laughter and one hand resting on Tuc’s arm.

She must have been Alli, his girlfriend.

I found myself drawn to her, I couldn’t look away. Her blonde hair was bouncy and she was radiant. It looked almost like there was a spotlight shining on her despite how dull the rest of the room was. It was jarring how alive she looked considering the fact that I knew a few years after the picture had been taken she’d killed herself.

I ripped my gaze away from Alli’s face and stared at Aquila. She was standing on a raised platform. I knew she was speaking, her lips were moving, but my hearing was muffled. I wasn’t sure if it was a result of the damage I’d taken during the attack or something else that was stopping me from being able to listen to her but I couldn’t do it.

Gem’s picture was like a magnet, constantly pulling my gaze back. Every time I looked at it, tears welled in my eyes and silently slipped down my face as guilt stabbed deeper into my heart. She shouldn’t have died. She didn’t deserve to die. She should have lived a long and happy life with us as her crew before retiring and marrying Cory.

They used to talk about having kids. The house they’d buy. Not on Nova but on Rhoms. She said that she wanted it to have at least two spare rooms so that Cas and I and Peggy and her future partner could stay there whenever but she wanted it to be bigger. She wanted to fill the house with kids, adopted and biological. She wanted to bring happiness to so many people.

She would have.

I forced my fist into my lips, pushing against it hard to stifle the sob that bubbled up. I didn’t want to cry, not properly and not there in front of so many people. I couldn’t bear the thought of my heartbreak being caught on film and it somehow getting back to the Council.

Hot rage filled my stomach as I imagined Harvey sitting in his office, watching the stream and laughing. He would have loved to see our sorrow.

My lip rose in a snarl as uncontrollable anger rushed through me. I’d make him pay. I will make him pay for every single life he has ruined with his greed. Gem, Tuc, Alli, Anya, Doctor Suel, and so many other people. He deserves death. He deserves to suffer the exact same way he has made everyone else suffer. He deserves pain and I will make sure he receives it.

I forced a deep breath out and swallowed down my tears as I looked back at Aquila on the dais. She seemed calm and in control, the perfect vision of a leader, but I saw the way her hands tightened on the podium as she read out Gem and Tuc’s final rites.

She seemed to be doing better than Andy and Elliot at least. Andy looked like he hadn’t slept at all in the last week. Lines were etched even deeper into his face and bags lay heavily under his eyes. He wore his old uniform, the one from the base. I hadn’t seen him in it often, only for the welcome talk and for funerals. I didn’t even know he brought it with him.

I remember asking him about it once, when I realised that he had formal dress just like the other tutors and a different, more elaborate one. I wasn’t sure on the reasoning behind it but I knew that him wearing it now was a sign of respect for Gem and Tuc.

An acknowledgement of their service.

Part of me felt angry that he wasn’t the one giving the service. I know that Aquila is the Captain of Freo and that the funeral wasn’t just for Gem but he was her Director and he always had been.

Movement from across the aisle finally got my attention and I watched as Tyler climbed the steps to the stage, a screen held in his shaking hands. Aquila stepped aside as he approached the podium.

He swallowed wetly a few times before looking up at us.

“I didn’t expect this many people to be here,” he began in an unsteady tone. “I didn’t know so many of you knew my son. Of course, some of you may be here for the other young person who was taken too soon but I like to think a significant amount of you are here for Tucky too.”

His smile wavered as tears escaped his eyes and he looked down at his screen, taking a moment to steady himself.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to talk about him for a little bit. Not enough people know the full story and I know that he would have wanted people to know. He was heroic, through and through. More of the universe deserves to know.”