I had never felt such peace as I did in the days after waking up in med bay. I had never felt such calm.

I knew that it was Leena’s doing.

What else could it have been? Nothing else in my life had changed, not really.

From the moment I woke up, life around the Vengeance had been much the same. The halls still seemed to bustle with activity, the crew still vibrated with anxious energy, plans were being made, threats assessed. From all appearances, it was life as normal, but something about me seemed to have changed.

I was calmer, more thoughtful. My mind still wandered often to the Xathi, but that was no longer the only place it traveled. I found myself thinking of things that I hadn’t in years, pleasant things—things that revolved chiefly around Leena.

I still woke occasionally to nightmares, long-buried memories that forced themselves out in the dead of sleep. It was nothing new, not for anyone aboard the Vengeance.

The days that we could rely on peaceful sleep were long gone, burned up with our families and our planets. I suppose that stood true, but for me, they had started to come less often.

For me, Leena was now there to pull me out of them, to remind me that things had changed since those days.

This was a new life.

A new planet.

And even though we weren’t yet free of the Xathi, we were no longer playing at such a great disadvantage.

We were making sure of that, more so with every passing day.

Leena spent her afternoons holed up in the lab, working tirelessly on new and improved scent bombs to use against the Xathi. I, for my part, was also working relentlessly.

There was always something new to learn about the enemy, always another plan to go through. My days were spent in command, working with General Rouhr and the others, desperately trying for any advantage.

We were approaching the problem from all sides now, no longer only relying on passion and determination to see us through. Sure, we had all wanted the Xathi dead before coming here, but that hadn’t been enough, not really.

We had been desperate men, the last of our respective species.

Nothing left to fight for but our revenge, nothing to protect but ourselves. It was no way to live.

It was no way to fight.

Desperate men might’ve had nothing left to lose, but they’d also had nothing real to hope for. That had all changed in the days since our arrival. We were approaching things from a new perspective now, one of strength rather than desperation.

For the first time in a long time, I felt that we might really have a chance.

We had to be different now, better. There was another planet at risk, countless more lives.

After years of doing, we were stalled, thinking before acting.

To be completely honest, there were moments where it was all but infuriating, but they were fewer than we might have expected. In a way, it was freeing to act like more than soldiers for once. Most days, anyway.

It didn’t help that my physical training had hit a roadblock. Recovering from my injuries had been slow and painful. I still trained to the best of my ability, but it was a weak imitation of my prior self. I couldn’t yet swing my hammer, could hardly keep up with Vrehx on runs.

Still, the doctors assured me I would heal with time, that there shouldn’t be any lasting damage. Most of the time I believed them, sometimes my impatience got the better of me. I was eager to be back to my full strength, to feel capable again.

On the bad days, Leena was there. She reassured me, she encouraged me, and perhaps most importantly, she distracted me.

When training became too much, I would head over to the lab to spend some time with her.

At first, it was enough just to watch her work. She was amazing, the depth of her understanding blew me away. Sometimes I’d ask questions, trying my best to follow along with her explanations.

Most days I’d just watch in utter fascination as she built weapons from next to nothing.

After a while, I became even more interested in the process, offering my help whenever I saw an opportunity. Leena, of course, was only too happy to put me to work.

She was amazing at the science of it all, the chemistry. But I soon found that I had a lot to offer to the task. I might not have understood it all, but building came to me like a second nature.

For hours at a time, we would sit together, me assembling the bombs while Leena worked at her concoctions. She had already come up with several new versions of the originals, each seeming more effective than the last.

With her help, I felt like real progress was being made.

As much as I loved my physical training, I started to really look forward to those days together. I had spent so much of my life as a weapon; it was like I had forgotten I could be anything else.

It was typical of my species, the Valorni were almost always dismissed as brutes. With our stature and natural talent for warfare, I suppose it wasn’t exactly an unfair assumption, but we could be so much more than soldiers.

It was just one more thing that Leena reminded me of.

On a day not long after I had begun to assemble the bombs, Leena and I sat in the lab, talking over a pile of equipment. By this point, she had started to trust in my abilities, no longer watching me like a hawk as I pieced together the weapons.

She had been busy triple-checking a formula when she suddenly sighed, sinking into her chair with a look on her face like defeat.

“What is it,” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

She leaned forward, propping her elbows on the desk and resting her head in her hands.

“Will it be enough?” she finally asked, not bothering to turn to me.

“The bombs?”

She sat up, “Yes, the bombs. All of it. Do you think it will be enough?”

I wanted to say yes, to reassure her immediately. But I knew Leena well enough to know that anything other than the truth would be pointless. She could smell a lie from a mile away, especially on me.

I stood from my chair, crossing the room to kneel in front of her. “I don’t know.”

She nodded as if she’d been expecting the answer.

“Some days it feels like it won’t.”

I knew what she meant. Some days it all felt almost pointless to me, as well. Those were the bad days, the ones where everything seemed so bleak.

“I have those days, too.”

“Often?”

I thought on it, running my hand through my hair as I did so. “Less often than I used to.” I answered, reaching for her hand.

A small smile tugged at her lips, “And before?”

That was easy enough to remember, “Before, I don’t think I ever believed anything could be enough, not really. Back then, the most I hoped for was to take out as many Xathi beasts as I could before they dragged me down with them.”

She didn’t pretend to be surprised at that, having witnessed it first hand when we first landed. She just tightened her grip on my hand, leaning down to press a kiss to my lips.

“I’m glad you don’t feel that way anymore.”

So was I.

“I really do think that we can beat them, Leena. Just look what we’re accomplishing here,” I gestured around the room. “This matters. This could make all the difference.”

She sat silently for a long moment, the wheels in her mind clearly turning. Finally, she nodded again, sitting up straighter in her chair and looking around the lab.

“Well then, I guess we better get back to work.”