Remnants

Chapter 2: Zaria

"Alexander Edwards!" Zaria shouted into the glass screen. "Don't you dare hang up on me or I'll..."

"Or you'll what?" Xander's face shouted back through the connector.

"I'll call you Alex for the next week," Zaria said tauntingly. He looked horrified before he remembered something.

"No, you won't. I'm gonna be on Maratos for the next four weeks. The vicious clubbing planet that you," he said pointing a thumb at her through the screen, "wouldn't be caught dead on."

Zaria sighed. Why did he have to be so difficult? "Either way you need to turn in your report."

"Already did that."

"Okay... what about your debriefing? You need to come to Command to do that," Zaria pestered.

"Nope. I already sent in a video recording."

"What?! You know the Captain doesn't like that!"

"Well guess what?" Xander said as he leaned into the screen. "You can go tell your father where he can stick..."

"Xander!" Zaria interrupted. 

"What? Look. Nothing you say will stop me from going to Maratos."

"I'm not saying don't go to Maratos. I'm just saying hold off a while. Come back to the Command. Something just feels off..."

"No. I want to go to Maratos today and I'm gonna stay there for four weeks. You can waste your time at Command if you want but I'm not gonna. I worked for them for the past five years, I can't stand another second. Now I'm hanging up and you can go ahead and call me that wretched, ordinary, Earth nickname if you want. Goodbye."

"Xander..." Zaria pleaded one last time before he hit the off button and the screen went black. Zaria sighed. She understood his point of view but he wasn't being rational. Something was off. She could feel it in her bones.

Zaria closed the connector and it folded into its usual pen size cylinder. Zaria tucked it behind her ear before taking in the view around her. She was on the roof of a building in Command. Command was the command center for all things war-related. It was the most secure planet in the empire and was filled with buildings for training and command centers. She was lost in memories when a voice interrupted her thoughts.

"To imagine you could've avoided all of this," a male voice said. Zaria's father, John Hoffman, stood behind her. He must've heard her conversation earlier.

"I don't believe I follow, Captain," Zaria responded curtly. She knew exactly what he was going to say.

"What I mean, Ms. Hoffman, is that you could've been a part of the Council but you chose to be an ordinary soldier with that... man."

"I do not desire to be a part of the Council," Zaria replied to her father. She knew what was coming next, but she didn't care. She wanted to be a soldier and fight on her feet, not sit around all day and discuss unimportant things. If her father couldn't stand it and decided to pretend like she wasn't his, then so be it. It wasn't going to change anything. 

"You should desire to be a part of the Council. You could change the world if you joined the Council. People would respect you. The name Zarianna Hoffman would be plastered across the capital, legends and songs will be written after you. You would hold power so great that even the gods couldn't measure it."

"No thank you. I'm not interested," Zaria snapped back.

"You're wasting your talent, Ms. Hoffman. I hope you realize that before it's too late," the Captain replied before turning and leaving.

As rude as he was, Xander was right. The Captain, to put it kindly, really was a jerk.

Zaria sighed and made her way back inside to find Andrew Edwards, the Edwards brother that she originally wanted to be partnered with. She was gonna need to borrow a ship if she wanted to make it to Maratos. Xander might not have felt anything but she did. That last mission that they sent Xander on felt wrong and not only because the Council made her stay in Command while her partner completed it.

If she was right, then there was much more to the story that they didn't know about. Xander and she had made many enemies the past year. If something really was happening, they would be the first ones in the line of fire.