Our training went quickly but it was weird without Peggy there. I hadn’t realised how much we relied on her to ask questions for us or to take comprehensive notes. We got into the routine pretty quickly but there was always a slight pause before asked questions. More than once, I started to ask Peggy something over thought only to stop myself and have to apologise to the rest of my crew.

I hated it. Each day I got more and more restless. The urge to storm Nova and hunt down Councillor Harvey grew by the day. My dreams about him became more frequent too. In them, I’d always find him in the Council headquarters, the sounds of the rest of the fighters subduing the Guardians stationed throughout the building.

Sometimes he’d win. I’d wake up, gasping for breath and still feeling his phantom hands squeezing my throat but most of the time, we’d win. It always varied how I killed him. Sometimes, I’d choke him to death as he always did to me. I’d watch the life fade out of his eyes, satisfaction rushing through me, but sometimes I’d just punch him until he couldn’t get up. I didn’t tell Doctor Hila about those. Something told me that he’d see it as a problem and I couldn’t risk being removed from the fighters.

I enjoyed working with them. That was the only thing that kept me from stealing a ship and hunting Peg down myself. We could do it. My crew and I. Even though we weren’t really able to work together at the moment, it didn’t mean we weren’t a crew.

That was Aquila’s rule. She said that, even though we were using face disrupters to conceal our identities, we still couldn’t go on missions together. Apparently, it was too risky. The Council had stepped up their hunt for us. They were taking people who fit our approximate heights and sizes and who ‘looked suspicious’. Whatever that meant.

The Guardians and IA would take the kids back to their ship and search them, see if they could be us. Elliot said that the Council believed that we’d had surgery to change our appearance and that’s why they hadn’t been able to catch us. Idiots.

It was kind of a pain to wear disrupters and wigs every time we went on missions. The wigs were hot and always stuck to the back of my neck and the disrupters felt so weird. You could feel the current hovering just over your skin and if you focused on it for too long, it became an unbearable tickle. More than once, I almost tore them off mid-mission but luckily, the missions were generally so frantic, I didn’t have a chance to think about it.

“‘Bout to enter the atmosphere. Disrupters on. Lace has already done her lap, no sign of Council presence,” Tuc, the primary pilot for this mission, informed me.

I tapped the concealed button on my temples and felt the familiar tingle of the disrupter working.

“Sorted?” I asked him, pushing my long blonde wig back from my face.

“Well, it’s on but people are going to be staring. You look like a Council-approved actress. No one naturally has skin that clear.”

I smirked and turned on the front-facing camera on the weirdly sleek, handheld comms device we’d been given. Staring back at me was wide, round blue eyes. Perfectly tanned skin was marred only by a smattering of freckles across my nose that only added to my beauty. My pink lips were full and pouty.

The disrupter had done its job. I looked nothing like me. It was unnerving to look in a camera and not see my own face. I’d been on dozens of missions but still, it never got any easier.

“I think that thing must be broken,” Tuc called over the noise of the engines.

“Why’s that?”

“Every time I wear one, I barely look humanoid.”

I smirked at him.

“There’s only so much the disrupter can do, it can’t create beauty from nothing.”

He grinned back, his dazzlingly white teeth showing, and raised one carefully plucked eyebrow at me.

“Alas, you know the old Earthen expression; you can’t polish a shit.”

I joined in with his laughter.

“Maybe I should speak to Chal, see if I can get some filler for my cheekbones or jaw,” he mused as he slowed the ship and prepared to land, his fingers caressing his perfectly chiselled face.

“Oh shut up, you know you’re perfect already. That’s why the Council were so pissed when your family disappeared. Your films are still played to this day.”

He pursed his lips at me.

“Oh, I know. I just like hearing people tell me I’m pretty. Do they really still play them?”

I snorted.

“Yeah, that recreation of that Earth Christmas movie was played in the orphanage every winter.”

“Mmm. That was a hard one to film. The data was corrupted so we only had footage of the family leaving the kid at home and then bits and pieces of that horrid child beating up some homeless guys. I have no idea why Earth thought it was a classic. I felt so cruel when I dropped a paint can on that guy, even if it was only made of bio-plastic.”

I gasped dramatically.

“It was only bio-plastic? I thought it was real! The magic of the film is ruined. I may never watch it again,” I teased.

“Alright, shut it, kid. Let’s go meet up with Lace and start delivering this food.”

I smirked and stood, striding out into the crew area of the ship and glancing around at the fighters.

“Wow!” Drac exclaimed, “You look great! What name are you going by today?”

I smiled and paused, scanning through the list of approved aliases that Elliot had given me.

“I’ll be Fornst today, I think.”

“Awesome, Fornst it is. Everyone got it?” Drac looked around at the rest of the team who nodded and called their agreement as they began preparing to disembark.

Tuc cocked his head to me, prompting me to start briefing the team. Fornax had told me I could start leading missions if all goes well but I needed more experience. Luckily, Tuc had taken me under his wing and was pushing me to take charge of the crew more.

“Alright. No helmets or gloves are needed for this one, the air is predominantly oxygen and the pressure is good. We’re delivering primarily food and farming equipment and we should be picking up some raw materials. Mostly metals, non-reactive. Does everyone have their earpieces?” I glanced around the crew before nodding, “Okay, any questions? No? Let’s go.”

I saw Tuc’s face light up with a proud smile as we snaked through the boxes in the bay of the ship and towards the door.

Taking a deep breath to prepare for the potential bad smell (I’d had a bad experience the week before on a fishing planet), I gestured for the ramp to lower and the doors to open.

Heat slapped into me as soon as they opened. The air was muggy and the small crowd of people waiting outside were in light coloured flowy dresses.

“Tuc, come meet Wron. He’s the delegate we’ve been speaking with,” Lace called, waving us down.

“Come on, Fornst, you can start hauling boxes after. This is part of your job too,” he muttered as he strode down the ramp.

I barely suppressed a groan, following him down as enthusiastically as I could.

I hated this part of the role. It was selfish but I didn’t want to meet people and hear about how much they were suffering because of us. I much preferred just being able to deliver the things they needed and go but Tuc was right. If I were leading the mission, I’d need to do this too.

I squared my shoulders and forced a smile onto my face.

“Nice to finally meet you, Wron. This is Fornst, she’s been training to lead missions.”

I raised my hand awkwardly in greeting, hoping he didn’t expect me to speak.

“Nice to meet you. You’ve come in the perfect time, food supplies are running very low. I have my team here who will assist in the unload,” he stumbled over his words slightly, clearly struggling with the language.

If Peggy were there, she’d know what language they spoke here. Hells, she’d probably be able to speak it too.

“Wonderful, my crew will start unpacking now. We’ve been able to source everything you requested, were there any problems on this end?”

I longingly watched the crew loading boxes onto the hover trays before leading them down the ramp as Tuc and Wron spoke. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck as we stood and I longed to wipe it away. The movement surrounding me and the blinding sun from the planet made it hard to concentrate. I tried hard to listen but the heartbreak in Wron’s voice as he spoke about his family members who had been taken by the IA filled me with guilt.

They hadn’t started rebelling until after they read what I wrote.

“Fornst, go help with the unpacking,” Tuc ordered, gesturing towards the ship with his head.

Relief washed through me at his words.

“Yes, Captain,” I tried not to sound too enthusiastic as I hurried away from them and back into the cold ship.

“Need a hand with that one?” I asked Drac who was struggling to get a box onto the hover tray.

“Yes, please,” he grunted, straining from the effort of manoeuvring the huge box.

I pushed from the other side, my sweaty palms slipping on the box, but finally, we managed to get it onto the tray.

It beeped frantically as it dipped before readjusting and bouncing back up to the level it was at before.

“Alright, take this one down kid. Then come back up here and help me with that one.” He pointed at another awkwardly shaped boxed wrapped in orange straps to keep it from being jostled during the flight.

“Back in a sec.”

I directed the tray down the ramp, careful to avoid the people in the light dresses. I snorted quietly. It would reflect badly on Freo if I took anyone out with this thing and it was definitely heavy enough to do some significant damage.

I led it over the brown, sandy ground and through the light brick arches towards the rest of the supplies my crew had already dropped off before typing quickly on the screen to start unloading the box. I looked around the large space as the hover tray began the automated process.

It was large, it had clearly once been a bustling market but now, it was bare. Some stands still stood, surrounded by faded fabrics but they were empty. Boxes filled the space and hungry-looking people milled about between them, occasionally glancing inside.

The tray beeped quietly to inform me that it had finished unloading and I stretched quickly before pushing it back towards the ship. The air rippled with heat and I had to stop several times to wipe sweat out of my eyes on the second journey.

Waiting for the box to finish being unloaded the second time, I grabbed my water bottle from my pocket and took a long sip. The layer of sweat on my face was making the buzz of the disrupter almost too much again. Glancing back at the ship, I could tell from the slow stream of people coming out that we were almost finished unpacking.

I could last for another ten minutes, that’s all it took. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, trying not to show my annoyance and felt a ripple travel across my face followed by nothing but the gentle kiss of the breeze.

Fuck. My disrupter.

I fumbled to hit the switch again, glancing around to make sure that no one had seen. The planet was continuing to move around me and no one had even glanced up except one kid. They were staring at me with wide green eyes. I felt frozen as I saw them tug on their mom’s arm and whisper something urgently.

His lips moved quickly as he tried to explain what he’d seen. I strained to hear what he was saying.

“—it was! I saw her! She looked just like the picture! It’s Captain Aries!”

A wince crossed my face as the mother’s sharp gaze landed on my face, catching the look of fear.

She started to travel towards me, limping lightly. I should have turned and run but I couldn’t move.

“Is it true? Are you Captain Aries?” her tone was hushed as her eyes scanned my face.

There was desperation in her voice and I recalled what we’d learnt in class. This planet had been one of the first to rise after our story came out. They argued that it showed them that they didn’t need to live under the Council’s thumb, that they could be free. They’d been punished the hardest for what they’d done but it had triggered countless uprisings across the galaxy.

I wasn’t sure if you wanted to thank me or kill me for what had happened but either way, I was willing to risk it.

I nodded silently.

She gasped, her fingers coming to her mouth as tears glistened in her eyes.

“See! I told you! I told you it was her!” the kid cried.

She raised a trembling finger to the small raised circle of my disrupter on my temple.

“May I?” she asked with rapt reverence in her voice.

I still wasn’t sure which way it would go but I nodded once more.

She tapped the button and I felt the mask fall away once more.

A gasp then a sob escaped her mouth as she stumbled backwards.

“Oh, thank the Gods! It is you. Captain Aries, thank you!”

She rushed forwards and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly.

“Oh… umm… thank you but I didn’t do anything. This was all you. You stood up to the Council and showed others that it could be done,” I insisted, glancing around uncomfortably.

Her loud sobbing was drawing more attention and whispered rippled through the newly formed crowd. They surged forwards, reaching out to touch me, to pat my shoulder, to reassure themselves that I was there. That I was real.

Tears fell freely from their eyes as they told me how much I meant to them, how much strength I had given them.

It felt wrong. Claustrophobic and suffocating but more so because I felt like a fraud. We hadn’t done anything. We weren’t special, we were just kids. If we’d have stayed on Freo the first them then none of this would have happened. They’d still be under the Council’s rule but they wouldn’t be missing husbands, wives, children, mothers and more.

“Aries, get back to the ship. You aren’t safe, the Council could find you here,” Tuc’s hushed voice came through my earpiece and I span, trying to see a way out.

But there was none. There was nothing but the smothering crush of the crowd.

A warm, firm hand landed on my shoulder and I span to see Drac standing behind me.

“Fighter ship. Go now,” he said, worry in his eyes and he led me through the crowd towards the single person fighter.

I knew it wasn’t safe for me to go back to Freo with the others straight away, the Council could be on their way now. I’d fucked up and I needed to run for the safety of everyone on the planet.

The crowd cleared for a second and I saw Lace leaning over the ship, firing up the engines.

“Back, everyone back!” Drac called, his low voice causing people to step away from the ship immediately.

I dived inside, my shaking hands finding the controls as Lace slammed the top of the ship.

“You’re clear, go,” Tuc commanded.

My heart hammered in my throat as I pulled up on the controls and shot away from the planet.