It had been six months since Chalmers' death, the fall of Kethlan, and the destruction of the Minotaur; on the other side of the known galaxy, Simon Dodds was awoken by the sound of someone, or something, rapping heavily on the porch door of his parents' house. At first he thought that the three loud thuds had been the result of the unlocked front door banging in the wind. Glancing out of his bedroom window, however, he saw the branches of the apple trees standing peaceful and serene in the breaking light of the early morning. Ignoring the disturbance, he turned over to catch some more sleep before the inevitable onset of his father's daily routine, dragging him out of bed to help work the fields, or deal with the orchards' tedious administration. Despite the fact that Simon was only staying with his parents for a short time - if one could count six months as short - his father was not going to permit him free food and lodgings without making him pull his weight.

He had barely shut his eyes again when another two thuds came from below, followed by the unmistakable sound of a man's distressed voice crying out for attention. It was followed by the sound of feet clumping heavily and unevenly down the porch steps and then scraping up the well worn dirt track leading away from the house.

Now more or less awake, Simon took a look at his bedside clock. The illuminated green numbers informed him that it was just past four thirty; too early for any of the orchard's hired help to be turning up. He reluctantly threw back the covers and pulled himself out of bed, making his way to the window. His bedroom was located almost directly above the front door. He shoved the window fully open and leaned out to investigate the source of the noise, which had abruptly ceased. Simon immediately spotted a figure sprawled on the ground, halfway up the track. He leaned further out and took a quick look around the surrounding area. Seeing no one aside from the body he drew back inside, turned around and gave a start.

"Who is it?" his father asked him. Gregory Dodds, also awoken by the commotion, had wandered into his son's bedroom. Simon noticed that he clutched a shotgun in one hand, no doubt in preparation for whomever he believed was attempting to break into their property; it would not have been the first time. Gregory had already activated the weapon, a digital counter towards the rear of the gun gently illuminating the man's chest with a soft blue light.

"There's someone outside," Simon replied.

"Where?"

"Halfway up the track, face down in the dirt."

Simon's father shoved past to see for himself and, just as Simon had done, took a quick glance around to see if there was anyone else about. Satisfied that the figure was the only likely source of the disturbance that had woken the family he turned once more to his son.

"We'll go and have a look. I'll have your mother get ready to call the police."

Simon nodded in agreement.

"Here," he said, reaching out to take the shotgun from his father. His father pulled back, pushing Simon's hand away from the weapon.

"You've got to be joking," Gregory said, giving his son a distrustful look.

"Dad, I'm not a child," Simon said, incredulously.

"You could have fooled me," Gregory remarked glancing to the gun and back to his son.

"And like I keep saying, that was an accident."

"Just put some clothes on," Gregory answered, leaving Simon's room. Simon pulled on yesterday's clothes and quickly laced up some boots before joining his father on the upstairs landing. By all appearances his father had also thrown on the previous day's clothes and the pair made their way down the stairs and opened the front door.

***

The figure in the dirt remained motionless. Leaving his father to guard the front door, Simon hurried up the track and knelt down next to the body.

"Hey," he said, giving the man gentle shake about the shoulder. The man let out a groan, and Simon wondered if me he was a drunkard who had staggered up to the house searching for a place to sleep. But the unpleasant, sticky wetness he felt on his hand was not vomit or alcohol; it was blood.

"He's hurt!" Simon called to his father, looking at the blood and dirt that clung to his fingers. His father quickened his step, joining his son by the body. Simon became aware of the man's attire and realised that he was wearing a somewhat loose fitting Confederation Stellar Navy flight suit. He rolled the man over on to his back carefully, discovering the front of the suit to be torn and bloody.

"One of your bloody lot!" his father muttered, kneeling down.

"Looks like he's been shot," Simon commented. Even though it was before sunrise, dark patches of blood could clearly be seen glistening on the suit. The wounded man's eyes fluttered open and his gaze fell upon the two that knelt over him. He tried to speak, but the effort seemed too great, only a whisper escaping his lips.

"Hey, you okay?" Simon asked loudly and clearly, but the man gave him no response, his eyes starting to close again.

"Can you stand?" Gregory asked, but there was no reply. "Let's get him inside the house," he suggested. He trotted back up the worn track to relieve himself of the shotgun, before returning to his son's side.

"Ready?" he asked Simon.

"Ready."

Simon lifted the man under the arms, his father taking his legs, the pair ignoring the groans from their unexpected guest. They made it back to the house, Simon noticing for the first time the red blood stains on the outside of the door where the man had thumped on the white painted wood.

"Oh God!" Simon's mother breathed as they struggled through the door and carried the man into the living room. She had pulled on a thin dressing gown over her night dress. She was a tall woman, with blonde hair and, at this moment, a shocked expression. A cat, that had been dozing peacefully on a chair, lifted its head and then shrank back as it saw the stranger in the men's arms. It jumped down from its resting place and darted out the room, past the men, the bell on its collar tinkling gently as it went.

"Sally, shotgun's just inside the porch, could you fetch it inside?" Gregory requested.

"He's been shot," Simon commented as he and his father deposited the man, who was breathing heavily on to the couch. Sally did as Gregory requested, bringing the shotgun inside and propping it up against a wall in the hallway, the ammunition counter projecting a blue hue on to a small spot on the wooden floor where it was placed. Sally moaned as she saw where the two men had set their unexpected visitor.

"Greg, you're going to get blood all over the couch," she complained. "Who is he? Where did he come from?"

"He's CSN, Mum," Simon said. "Do you know where the first-aid kit is?"

"Hello? Can you hear me? What's your name?" Simon's father was still trying to get a response.

"It's "Dean", Dad, it says so on his suit," Simon pointed out the grey boxed, yellow lettering on the left breast beneath the squadron logo. "Mum, first-aid? He's bleeding pretty badly," Simon prompted his mother who was staring at the injured man.

"I'll call an ambulance," Sally said, coming out of her trance and making her way over to the video phone that hung on the wall out in the hallway.

"And you call the Navy immediately afterwards," Gregory added to his son.

"N... No! Don't!" the stranger named Dean suddenly cried out, looking around for who was speaking.

"You need medical treatment! We have to get you to a hospital or a doctor," Simon's mother answered him, before picking up the phone.

"No... no doctors! No Navy!" the man protested forcefully, finding strength to talk. "Let... let me stay... here! Please!"

"Hey, calm down," Simon put in. "You're in shock."

Dean looked quite distressed as Sally left the living room and walked out of his view, his breathing becoming erratic.

"Where's the first-aid?" Simon asked his father.

"Your mother knows," Gregory answered. "We'll get it after she's called the ambulance."

"Simon," Dodds heard his mother call from out in the hall. He left his father's side and found his mother floundering in front of the video phone that hung on the wall. "I can't remember how we do this." Although Simon's mother was not technologically inept – she and her father had spent many years prior to owning the orchard working in financial services – the current circumstances had caused her to become quite flustered.

"Just tap the screen anywhere and then press the "Emergency Services" icon," Simon prompted. He positioned himself within the doorway of the living room, so that he could both keep an eye on their guest and jump in to assist his mother should she need it.

Sally tapped the touch-sensitive screen to bring the phone out of its sleep state, the device lighting up and displaying icons and options. She quickly stabbed at the "Emergency Services" icon and hugged at herself impatiently as the screen informed her the video phone was connecting. Presently it did so and, from his skewed angle of the screen, Simon could just make out the headset wearing blonde woman who answered the call.

"What service do you require?" said a blonde haired woman.

"Ambulance," Sally said hastily. "We've got a man here suffering from gunshot wounds."

"What's his condition?" The woman's fingers tapped away at an unseen device.

"He's bleeding quite heavily. Not sure how many times he was shot, but he can't walk and can barely speak. We had to carry him into the living room from outside the house."

"Are the wounds the result of a projectile or energy weapon?"

"I... er... I don't..."

"Are there any burn marks? If it was an energy weapon then in most cases you'd be able to smell the burnt clothes and wounds."

Sally glanced over to her son.

"Bullets, Mum," he answered.

"Bullets," Sally repeated.

"Okay, thank you," the operator confirmed, calmly. Simon could see his mother ringing at her dressing grown quite hard.

"Has he been shot in the arms, legs, torso or head?" the woman wanted to know.

"His body. The chest, it looks like." The woman at the emergency services tapped away and then paused, looking down at a display for a few moments, a curious expression on her face.

"Please hold the line for just a moment," she said, her image suddenly disappearing to be replaced with a medical services logo.

"She's just hung up!" Sally announced. Simon looked back from where he had been observing Dean on the couch.

"Are you sure?"

"It's gone back to this screen." Simon was about to start over to investigate when the operator who has answered the call re-appeared on the screen.

"Could you confirm your name and address?" she requested. Sally did. "Okay, good. Someone will be with you within the next thirty or forty minutes. Now listen carefully: please do not move the victim since you could cause him additional trauma. The bullets may have missed vital organs, so we don't want to do anything that could result in further injury. The biggest risk to their life will come from loss of blood. If you are able, dress the wounds and try to stem any blood loss. It could make the difference between life and death. Do not move him from the house or attempt to bring him to us yourself."

Simon heard his mother swear before she brushed past him into the living room.

"What's wrong?" Gregory asked.

"They're not going to be here for another thirty minutes," Sally told him.

"Thirty minutes?!" Gregory said, horrified.

"We'll have to take him ourselves," Simon suggested.

"They said not to move him, it could make things worse," Sally said, wringing her hands. "We're going to have to do the best we can for him until they get here. I'll find a first-aid kit. Simon can you call the Navy?"

"No, he said not to," Simon answered quite firmly. His mother stared at him in disbelief for a second.

"Simon..."

"No, he asked us not to contact them. Didn't you hear him?"

"Simon, don't talk to your mother that way," Gregory said, a scowl on his face.

"I'm just following protocol, Dad," Simon answered.

Gregory looked at his son incredulously. "Oh, so now you decide that it's time to start doing as you're told..." he began.

"Oh for God's sake, stop it you two! Just stop it!" Sally said. "Don't start having that conversation again, especially now! I've heard it every day for the last five months!"

"I'm just trying to do the right thing," Simon defended himself.

"And why couldn't you have done the right thing then?"

"It was an accident, Mum! Those people were just there. It's not as if I decided to shoot them all on purpose. I didn't go out of my way to kill them."

"And now you're just going to let it happen here instead!" Sally said, choking back tears and turning away, before leaving the living room, and the three men, behind her. Simon watched as she walked in the direction of the kitchen and began pulling things out of cupboards in a search for sufficient medical supplies. He began to start after his distressed mother.

"Simon, wait there a moment," his father called. Simon turned back to the scene in the living room, watching his father undoing Dean's flight suit and trying to get a better look at his injuries. The extent of the damage was clear even before the white vest Dean wore beneath the suit was pulled up. Two dark holes were prominent in Dean's chest, blood still seeping out with each breath. Gregory stood and walked over to Simon.

"Why doesn't this guy want us to call an ambulance or the Navy?" Gregory asked. Simon shrugged.

"He might be involved in some kind of covert operation."

"Covert? You mean he's meant to be doing something in secret?"

"Yes," Simon looked at Dean, who was still breathing heavily.

"Well what does he expect us to do with him?" Gregory asked in slightly accusing tones. "Do you know him?"

"No," Simon shook his head. "I've never seen him before in my life. Honestly," he added, seeing the unconvinced look his father gave him. They returned to Dean and knelt down next to the couch.

"Looks like he's been shot in the chest and shoulders. You stay here with him, I'll help your mother find some bandages and something to plug up the wounds."

Dean was staring up at the ceiling and breathing hard, struggling to catch his breath. Simon decided to try and discover what had happened whilst he still could.

"Don't worry, mate, everything's going to be okay. You'll just have a few scars to show your friends. Confederation Stellar Navy, eh? I'm in the service myself, although it's a little complicated right now."

Just in case you're wondering why a twenty-nine-year-old is still living at home with his mum and dad, Simon thought to himself.

"Yellow Dogs?" The young man noted the emblem of a cartoon dog, tongue lolling from its mouth, on the outside of Dean's flight suit. "Not heard of you guys. I usually fly with the White Knights."

At Simon's words Dean turned his head to look at the young man, his eyes filled with anguish.

"A... TAF... ject..." he tried, the effort of speaking seemingly quite great.

"What?" Simon drew closer. Simon could hear his mother's distressed voice carrying through from the kitchen as she spoke to his father, evidently upset by what she had been dragged into.

"... you don't know who's done this to him. They could come around here looking for him!" she was saying.

"We didn't see anyone else outside," Gregory said.

"But how did he get here? Did he drive? Where's his car?"

"He's a pilot. Maybe he parachuted?"

"So where was his parachute? Where did his plane or whatever it was come down?"

"I don't know, dear."

"That man is going to die unless he gets to a hospital!"

Simon was intent on discovering what had happened to Dean and how he had come to be there. The wounded pilot reached out and limply grabbed Simon by the shoulder.

"A... T.. AF... operation..." the man tried again.

"You ejected from your TAF?" Simon asked, trying to make sense of what Dean was saying. If he'd ejected from his TAF how did he get all those bullet wounds? Had someone managed to shoot him while he sat in the cockpit? That didn't make any sense. Bullets would have a hard time getting through the toughened canopy, let alone the energy shields surrounding the fighter. "Where did you come down?" Simon wanted to know. The man started coughing and took another deep breath.

"Imperial war... wrong..." was all he could manage. Simon did not know what he was talking about. The Imperial civil war was wrong? Of course it was, all wars were wrong. Even he, as a pilot in the Confederation Stellar Navy, knew that.

"Right Simon, give me a hand here," Gregory reappeared in the living room, carrying a small red first-aid box and a much larger medical kit. He dumped them both on the floor at the foot of the couch and together the pair did their best to bandage the man, but they both knew that he would die without proper medical attention.

As Simon bandaged the bullet wounds in the man's chest in a futile attempt to stem the flow of blood, he noticed his mother in the door way. She was still distressed and he could make out the tears sliding down her face. He was well aware of what she must have been thinking: one day it might be her son in the same position, being patched up by friends, or strangers, as they made a futile attempt to prolong his life for what would likely prove to be only a few minutes. He smiled back at her, to let her know it would be okay. Following naval protocol or not, he now regretted the way he had spoken to her. Dean could not have been much older than himself, something which had compounded her anguish.

The wounded pilot never took his eyes off Simon as he and his father tried to make him comfortable and stable.

"Sudarberg," Dean said, still staring directly at Simon.

"What did he say?" Gregory asked, the two men ceasing their futile bandaging to listen.

"Sudarberg?" Simon asked, leaning closer to Dean.

"Y... yes. Stay... a.. aw.. way."

"Where's Sudarberg?" Gregory asked.

"I don't know, I've never heard of it. Where's Sudarberg? Why should I stay away from it?" Dean did not answer, but panted, struggling to swallow.

"This guy is going to die unless we can get him to a hospital soon," his father remarked. Simon looked over their attempts to preserve the man's life, their efforts far poorer than what he had originally envisioned. Whilst the medical kits contained a number of dressings, bandages and solutions designed to stimulate rapid coagulation, they were not enough to contend with Dean's kinds of injuries, nor his sustained blood loss.

"Right, Simon, call your friends at the Navy, they might be able to get here quicker," Gregory said, sounding as though he had just thrown in the towel. "Whatever this guy is worried about, I'm sure its not worth dying over."

Simon saw the sense in what his father was saying and pushing protocol aside he made the call. He then sat with Dean attempting to get a little more information out of him whilst they waited for help to arrive. But Dean was done talking, and less than twenty minutes later he was dead.

***

"Where exactly did you find him?" A CSN officer was asking the Dodds family. It was quite late in the morning and several men and women were carrying out final investigations of the perimeter of the family home. The ambulance that Simon had called never arrived. Instead a military medical transport had showed up, a number of fairly heavily armed personnel accompanying the medical team into the house. In addition a large area around the house and orchards had been sealed off, the workers arriving at the orchard being turned away.

"He was lying there, face down on the ground," Gregory explained once more, pointing at the spot they had found Dean and trying to keep his anger in check. "How much longer is this going to take? You've been here for bloody hours! I've got pickers and harvesters waiting to get to work!"

"I just need to ensure I have all the details down, Mr Dodds," the officer said, tapping away at a hand held device with a stylus. "After you found him, what did you do next?"

"For the love of God, are you deaf?" Simon's father glowered, having been over the events four times already with as many people.

"Dad, don't worry, I'll deal with this," Simon said. "Go and check that they're not destroying the house." His mother and father departed to ensure that the family home was not being torn apart, and Simon turned back to the officer. "We brought him inside and called for an ambulance. The medical services told us it would be over half an hour before they could get to us, so we attempted to patch him up ourselves." The officer nodded.

"According to your call records you waited a good twenty-five minutes before placing the call to the nearest military hospital, regarding Lieutenant Commander Dean's condition. Why did you wait so long?" the man wanted to know, the device he held recording everything that Simon was saying.

"I considered that he may have been taking part in a classified mission and I needed to be sure I wouldn't be putting the operation or other participants at risk by drawing attention to his presence." Simon stopped short of telling the officer about Dean's objection to the call for an ambulance or other medical assistance. The officer seemed satisfied.

"Okay, that's fine. I can appreciate that it was a difficult position you found yourself in, but you made the right decision. I believe you are currently in the service of the Confederation Stellar Navy yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"Could you please state your full name and rank?"

"Second Lieutenant Simon Dodds," Simon answered. The man tapped away at the digital assistant in his hand and waited for it to retrieve the information he was after.

"Says here that you have flown with the White Knights for several years and that you are currently on suspension from active service; reinstatement not due for at least another six to seven weeks, pending the outcome of further hearings. Is that all correct?"

"Yes," Simon said, trying not to glare.

"May I ask where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing for the last four and a half months?"

"I've been working here."

"You've not been anywhere else? Not left the country or the planet?"

"No, sir."

"Fine," the officer said, tapping again at the screen. "Did Dean speak much before his death?"

"Only to tell me that he had ejected from his Tactical Assault Fighter, though I never heard it come down. It's pretty quiet around here, so I'm sure it would have woken me up. He didn't manage to tell me how he got all those bullet wounds either."

"The TAF has been taken care of," the man stated, eyes focused on the digital assistant.

"Where did it come down?" Simon asked, looking around a little confused, as if expecting to see a plume of smoke rising from somewhere in the distance. "Not in one of the orchards?" If the TAF had come down, then surely there would be some sign of its crash? And come to think of it, where was Dean's parachute?

"No, there is no need for any such concern. Like I said, it's been taken care of. Did he say nothing else?" Simon felt as though the man was trying to suggest that he might be trying to hide something.

"No."

"Okay. Thank you for your co-operation. You can let your family know that we will be departing shortly," the man said before powering down the PDA and slipping it back into his jacket. He pressed a button on a device in his ear and briefly spoke to confirm he was finished.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant. Just one thing before we go," he called to Simon, who was making his way over to join his mother and father. The officer made one last point clear: no one had come to the house that night and none of them had ever heard of a man named Patrick Dean. Once they understood and fully agreed with what he was telling them, he then informed them, rather pleasantly, that they would have their couch replaced later that day, or early the next. Their living room had also been thoroughly cleaned, leaving no trace of the incident.

***

"Bloody pain in the arse!" Gregory complained after the CSN had finally departed. Simon and his father were trying to locate and organise any orchard workers who may have decided to return to work that afternoon. Simon did not comment, the whole experience seeming a little surreal to him at this point. "Let's hope that it'll be another ten years before we see that lot again."

The CSN returned just two weeks later.