As long as they were here on Archavia, Rixie had to make this stop.

They were not on Archavia to visit Rajenlif; indeed, they were not on Archavia for any reason of Rixie’s. They were visiting the world so that Alex could check on preparations for the 25^th Anniversary.

This year had seen many, many 25^th Anniversaries. Some had been celebratory, or at least, mostly so; some had been somber, and some, like the celebration of the Defeat of Trell during the Second Battle of Atlantis, had been a bit of both.

This anniversary would be one of the somber ones, and at first it may seem strange that this somber, sober event would be held at a Rixie’s in Orion Province.

After everything that had happened, the storefront had remained unfilled for over two Imperial years, despite being in a highly trafficked area of Lordale. But then, not many people would take a chance on starting a business on the site of the Rutger Massacre.

But that’s exactly what one of Alex’s first franchisees had done. Granted, she was mostly a hands-off investor – she had her hands full with her work with Tannith Ley. But Bedra had recognized that the cost of the place had dropped so low that it essentially had to pay off, and she had decided one day that the best thing she could do was ensure that the building where her friends had been assaulted, and where over a hundred humans had been murdered, would never be torn down. So rather than renting space, she had purchased the building outright, with an eye on restoring it to functionality. She quickly realized that it was best suited for what it had been – a club, a bar, a place to gather – and a place that was not just believed to be human-friendly, but which was truly so.

And so it had become a Rixie’s, and over the years it had made a lot of money for Bedra’s investment group (which included a certain designer who had nearly lost her life there). Alex had happily taken the franchise fees on the condition that the private room where the massacre was held was not simply turned into more floor space, an agreement that Bedra gladly kept. Indeed, she now had the title amended so that if the building was ever sold, that space would be given to the Aenur Foundation for preservation.

That room was now a memorial to the 120 humans killed, the three injured; the countless Dunnermac roe consumed; and at the insistence of Darren Xanthopolous, the one Titan to have lost her life.

Alex gave his franchisees a wide latitude for the most part, but this wasn’t just any local promotion, and Bedra had asked for him to come to talk over the plans. This was, after all, the most important commemoration of this event yet. When Darren and Tapp had been attacked, they were legally pets. There had been many commemoration services, but this would be the first where Darren and Tapp would officially be people. As would, finally and completely, the 120 people who had been murdered there.

This was obviously serious business, and Rixie left Alex to it. She had instead taken Asteria with her on the relatively short shuttle ride to Chirae Ankelos, where the blue mid-day rays of Sol Archavia were beating down on a compact campus, where young men and women were leading children from building to building as their schedules unfolded.

“This,” Rixie said to Asteria, “is where mommy grew up, when she was just a little girl like you.”

“Mommy have mommy here?”

“No, Starry. Mommy didn’t have a mommy.”

“Mommy have daddy?”

“No,” Rixie said. “Mommy didn’t have a mommy or a daddy.”

Asteria furrowed her brow for a moment, before pronouncing, “Vani be mommy’s mommy.”

Rixie smiled. “Pryvani is a good mommy, but she’s mommy’s friend.”

“Daddy be your daddy?”

“Sure, daddy can be my daddy,” Rixie said, making a mental note not to share her daughter’s wisdom with him, because he would assuredly take that one way too far.

They entered the administration building, and Rixie walked up to the receptionist. “Hello,” she said.

The man looked up. “Hello there. May I help you? Are you here for a tour?”

“Perhaps, and yes,” Rixie said. “I would like a tour, but if possible, can you tell me if Euridia Dal is available?”

The man shook his head. “She is here, but I know her day is very busy.”

“Can you check to see?”

The receptionist sighed heavily. “I’m sorry not everyone can just drop in on the Senior Director. Can you make an appointment?”

“I would, but I live off-world. Can you at least ask her to contact me? I’ll give you my padcode.”

“All right, what’s your name?”

“Rixie Carey. My padcode….”

“Wait…you’re Magister-Imperator Rixie? Cousin, why didn’t you say so! Of course, Aunt Euridia would be delighted to make time for you, I’m sure. And honestly, it’s an honor to meet you. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, I really should have. Pirin Dal, I’m so sorry,” he said, reaching out a hand.

Rixie shifted Asteria onto her left hip, and grasped his wrist. “Not at all, cousin.”

“Here, one second….Yes, this is Pirin, Rixie Carey is here, she’d like to meet with Aunt Euridia. Yes, Rixie Tam Carey…excellent. I’ll send her back. Thanks! Okay, I’ll have Rala take you back.”

Rixie nodded politely. She wasn’t famous, and not nearly so famous as her onetime alter ego, and not remotely as famous as her boss. But there were small pockets of the Empire where she herself was a celebrity.

She was never quite sure how she felt about that.

A youngish Dal boy, no older than twelve or thirteen, came up to the front to lead Rixie and Asteria back. He led them back through offices to a large corner office in the back, and as she reached it, Euridia Dal popped out.

“Rixie!” the old woman exclaimed, throwing her arms wide. “You should have told me you were coming! I hope you can stick around a bit, I know the Tam cadets would love to meet you.”

“Aunt Euridia,” Rixie said, embracing the frail old woman. “It’s been a while.”

“You’ve been busy. Back in the Corps, I hear. And you have this beautiful little one! What is your name?”

Asteria was trying to melt into Rixie – she was always a bit shy around new adults – but Euridia hunched over slightly. Rixie knew it had to hurt a bit – Euridia had to be in her early eighties, after all. But the Director made sure to get her head down to Asteria’s level, and spoke directly to her.

“I’m ‘starya,” the little girl said.

“Asteria. That’s a lovely name!” Euridia nodded to her braid. “And I see that you’re Jotnar, like your mommy.”

“Yup! Mommy’s Jotnar and daddy’s anthar and I’m both,” Asteria said.

“You remind me of your mommy when she was your age. Did you know that I took care of your mommy when she was little?”

“Are you mommy’s mommy?”

“No, I’m her aunt. Do you have an aunt?”

“Yeah! Aunt Em’ly, and Aunt Julie, and Aunt ‘Vani, and Aunt Lemm….”

“Well then. You know how much they love you, I’m sure.”

“Yeah. An’ when Thyllia has her baby, I’m gonna be an aunt!”

“Wow! Being an aunt is very important,” Euridia said. “But I think you will be a fine one. And you will love that baby as much as your aunts love you.”

“Uh-huh. Ryan is on his ship, so I’m gonna help.”

“And I’m sure you will help. Your mother always was helpful.”

“That is not true at all,” Rixie said. “You put up with a lot from me.”

“No more than I put up with any of the others, dear. Besides, you and your close cousins will always be special to me. You were the last group I cared for directly, before getting kicked up to administration. Please, come in!”

The office of the Director was quite modest by the standards of someone responsible for the Hoplites. But then, the Hoplite Order had always viewed itself as a calling, not a business; the office was modest because the Dal (or very occasionally, the Pir) who occupied it was expected to eschew finery if it could go instead to the children in their care. Rixie knew, because Pryvani knew, that the Hoplites had an endowment that could meet their operating budget in perpetuity. If Euridia had wanted to build a new tower to house a larger office, she could have done it with a stroke of her pen. But one didn’t become the Director of the Hoplites if one aspired to luxury; there were plenty of paths for a Hoplite to follow that could provide that. Rixie had followed one, though not necessarily on purpose.

“Do sit down, Rixie. So what brings you to the campus?”

Rixie frowned. She had been quite sure what she was going to say before she got here. But she had nothing but fond memories of Aunt Euridia. Even when she was promoted to Supervisor of Childcare, and on to Deputy Director, she had always come back to visit her group. And she had always made time if one of them wanted to talk. She was, Rixie knew, as close to a mother as she’d had.

But because she was only somewhat close to a mother, Rixie knew she had to talk about this. And so she said, “Aunt Euridia…I’ve found out something about my birth family.”

If Euridia was surprised, she didn’t show it. But she didn’t say anything to Rixie, not at first. Instead, she knelt down next to Asteria. “You know, it is about lunch time for the 24s, and then it’s playtime. Asteria, would you like to meet some of the boys and girls who live here?”

“Um…I don’t….”

“They live here just like your mommy did when she was your age,” Euridia said.

“Uh…okay. If it’s okay with mommy.”

“It’s okay Starry. Like Aunt Euridia said, this is where I grew up.”

Euridia hit her pad. “Lenna, can you take Rixie’s daughter Asteria down to visit the 24s? We will be along in about 20 minutes. Thanks, dear.”

Lenna came to whisk Asteria away, as Rixie helped Euridia up off the floor. “You didn’t have to do that. She would have listened without you putting yourself out,” Rixie said.

“Oh, I know. But if something is worth doing, it is worth doing completely. And when I retire at the end of the year….I became a Dal because I loved children. A bit of a pain in my knee is worth it to make her happy.”

Euridia settled into the chair behind her desk. “So. You came here to talk to me about your parents.”

“Not…all of it. I can’t share all I know. Unless you know who they are.”

“I do not,” Euridia said. “No doubt Ronon did; you were processed under his directorship. But these records are not kept, beyond what we tell you. These things are not shared. Discretion is how we have lasted this long. What we told you was what the records said to tell you.”

Rixie looked at Euridia closely. “But when you told it to me…you knew you were lying.”

Euridia smiled ever-so-slightly. “There is a reason I told you I thought you’d make a fine Imperator. You always had a keen sense of whether you were being deceived. Yes, I knew it was a cover story. It was too neat. Most of the children who come here, there are some loose ends. Some evidence of family that could have taken them, but didn’t. Your story had all the loose ends cut. Whoever put you with us wanted to make sure you would never have any threads to pull.”

“So you lied to me!”

Euridia sighed. “What would you have preferred, Rixie? Would you have preferred that I tell you that your parents were probably alive, but that your existence was so shameful that they hid you away? That they might be out there, but you’ll never know it, because they have abandoned you with us? Would that have stung less?”

Euridia looked down at her desk. “The lie we told you was out of kindness, dear. Whoever your parents are, they gave up a wonderful child. I would rather have had you mourn the idea of loving parents who had to die before they would surrender you, because that’s what you deserved. That’s what all the children here deserve.”

“How many children are being lied to on this campus today?” Rixie asked.

“A half-dozen or so. I won’t give you the exact amounts or demographics. And you won’t go pulling those threads. Nothing good comes when these secrets come out.”

“How do you know? I could have had my real parents!”

“I could have too,” Euridia said.

Rixie looked at the woman in shock; she knew that as a Dal, Euridia had been raised a Hoplite. But somehow, it had never quite occurred to her that the woman sitting before her was…was an orphan like her.

“When I was about forty,” Euridia said, “I was approached by a young man, a member of one of the noble houses. I won’t tell you which one, and it doesn’t matter. He told me – and he had records to prove it – that I was his half-sister. His older half-sister. He was an honest man; he didn’t have to come find me, but he was in a position where he had the opportunity to succeed to the primacy, and he did not want to do it if I was the true heir. He told me he would gladly pay me to give up any claim, and that if I truly wanted to succeed, he would support me – because he could not stand honestly as a Guardian of the Empire, knowing that he had failed to safeguard his sister’s rights.”

“What…what did you do?”

“Well, I am not Lady Dal, so one may surmise that I did not ask him to step aside. Nor did I ask him to pay me money. I asked that he support the Hoplite Order in its work, and he did so gladly. And I asked that he remember those who were not born to luxury in his work, and he most certainly did. He became a friend; we did not become siblings, not really, but we visited enough. I have given you, I suppose, enough information that you could track him down, but you won’t. For one thing, he’s dead, and for another, you know that it is a secret that I want to die with me.”

Rixie leaned back. “Why didn’t you want to be a Guardian of the Empire?”

“You work for Sen. Tarsuss. Would you want to be one?”

Rixie smiled. “I’m uncomfortable enough with my son being one.”

“Exactly. Your friend Lemm…I do know her true story. It matches what is in our files. Her parents were not famous, not ‘important,’ whatever that means. And yet she has achieved greatness in her career, defended our Empire. That is far more important than any family lineage. The most important thing is not who our parents were, it’s who we are. If you are proud of your life, that is the most important thing. I was proud, and I was happy. I was happy here. I didn’t need to be the head of the Whatever family.”

She smiled sheepishly. “But that didn’t mean that I didn’t vent my frustration at Ronon, just as you’re here to vent your frustration at me. Because I know that I was a poor substitute for a mother; I couldn’t be more than I was. But I also know that I love you quite a bit more than you realize, and that I am deeply proud of who you have become.”

“Aunt Euridia…you did your best. All the Order did, I know,” Rixie said. “But you know why I’m here. I got to be a mother, a full and complete mother, to Ryan, and I’m getting to be one to Asteria, and I just…there’s part of me that’s almost jealous of them. That sounds strange, I know, but…they have a mother and father, and have for as long as they can remember. Even Ryan, who lost his birth parents, actually lost his birth parents. His mother died defending him. He can know that, and honor that. I know who my father is, my birth father. He is wealthy, and powerful, and he was even then, and I…I was here.”

“True,” Euridia said. “But my dear, I have known few people as driven to succeed as you. I remember when you were eight, and you told Otes Pir – he was Otes Nul back then – that you were Jotnar, and he made some crack about colors of faces. You didn’t attack him, not then. You simply put a braid in your hair, and waited until you had the advantage. You caught him unawares, and gave him six stitches.”

“You were not happy about that,” Rixie said.

“I was ecstatic!” Euridia said with a cackle. “He deserved it. He’d been running his mouth at everyone for a solid six months before that, he needed to be taken down a peg, and once he crossed into outright racism…well, we couldn’t condone it, you had to get hard cleaning duty for it. But there were more than a few of us who were impressed. Indeed, that was when Solu Tam all but demanded we slot you in as a cadet, even though the assessments were three years away.”

“I never would have made it as a Pir or a Ro. And I know I wasn’t Dal material,” Rixie said.

“In the brief time I’ve seen you and Asteria together, dear, I can tell you that you’re very wrong in that. You would have made an excellent Dal.”

“Thank you,” Rixie said.

“The system stinks,” Euridia said. “I know it does, Rixie. But it’s going to. There will always be parents who do not want their children. As long as we’re here, we can take those children and give them a chance to shine, to succeed – and a chance to become parents who love their children and raise them up themselves. And that’s what we did for you, for Lemm…for me. Whatever your parents did, that was their mistake. And if they know who you are, that mistake burns in their gut. But as I was saying, when you were eight, we saw the ember of your determination, your strategic instincts, your pride. We saw the makings of a fine officer, a fine defender of the Empire, a fine young woman. We gave you the opportunity to become who you are now. Would you have if your parents had raised you? Perhaps. But I think you know what I discovered about myself: That drive, that passion, that person existed because you were a Hoplite. Had your parents raised you, you would have been a very different person. And that would have been a great loss, I think.”

Rixie sighed. “Aunt Euridia…I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t change any of my life, except for Alex…getting hurt. But it still hurts.”

“It always will,” Euridia said. “I still feel abandoned sometimes, and my biological parents are long-dead. But even after I retire, if you ever need to talk to an old caregiver, I will always find time for you.”

“I know,” Rixie said, gripping Euridia’s hand. “Now, we should get my daughter. And I think you said there were some Tam cadets you wanted me to talk to?”

“I don’t want you to feel obligated. Not on a day where this campus feels less like a home than ever.”

Rixie sighed. “Parts of it are still very much my home, Aunt Euridia. And if these boys and girls are here for the same reason we were…then they need someone to help them grow, so some day they can stick it to the people who left them here.”

Euridia smiled wide. “That’s the spirit, Rixie. That’s the spirit.”