Sunshine contacted her mother while in the bathroom. "Mom? Why did you kill Thena's parents?" Sunshine sounded thin and stressed. Rose responded, "Make this quick! A starship just crashed into Shalmiraine. Who do you think I killed?" Sunshine responded, "She and her older brother, Dokka Aurora are survivors of Refuge. You shot that floating city DOWN! WHY?" Rose did a search on the man and found his location to be in the midst of the crash-site. Rose felt sick at thinking of some little girl's only relative dying. She closed on the site, breaking MACH to get there. She asked Sunny, "He got a cybernetic arm, and she got a cybernetic body didn't she?" Sunny responded, "Yes." She was down to one syllable. When a chatterbox like her shuts up, it wasn't good. Rose responded as she saw how huge the the alien ship was. It was over 800 meters long and almost 300 meters tall, turned over on it's side. As she came in to the flaming wreckage, she said, "Sunny... I am a soldier. If I have to, I KILL people for the good of the greater population. I was following orders. I was ordered to bring down Refuge with a nuclear missile. I found an alien ship hiding cloaked in Refuge's shadow." "I shot it. Refuge was in it's shadow. If I HAD NOT shot that ship, Refuge would have been vaporized and this planet would have been taken by a surprise attack by the Scourge. I HAVE to go! Wounded people need saving!" Rose contacted Jalisco, who was already on the ground, next to where the person she was looking for was at. She told him who the man was. She didn't have to explain anything to him. Jalisco did comment on the man's name. "Same first name as our captain? Some coincidence!" A command center was being set up next to the square mile of wreckage. Rose found where the man named Dokka Aurora was supposed to be. She had found the information on his cybernetic arm. She barely detected it in the middle of a burning building almost under the alien wreck. She turned up her shields and dived into the inferno. She came out ten feet from his body. She didn't detect any heartbeat, or respiration. She could hear the RF interference of his brainwaves though. She cut his body free of the collapsed wreckage, by hacking through his legs. She scooped him up and ran out through the flames and falling debris. She barely made it out as the flaming building fell in behind her. She ran the body over to an ambulance and tossed Ensign Aurora into a cryo-chiller to super-cool his blood. She accessed the medical protocols from the Cyclops doctors over the Consensus. Doctor Blue got informed and remote controlled her hands with her permission, and did a miracle. He breathed on his own. One of the Fleet Medics gasped out, "That was amazing! You're a Fleet Commander, not a doctor...How?" "I have a doctor friend who borrowed my hands for a while. Get this man to hospital, ASAP!" She accessed the Consensus and got updated, and moved out to the next rescue. It would be hours before she could rest or check on her daughter, or what Sunny was concerned about. At least she had saved one man. One man she had killed the family of and cost him his right arm. Sunny had a friend whose family was dead because of her. The world WAS a better, safer place for her species because of those orders that she followed, but the path of the soldier was never an easy one. From the killings she had done in the name of freedom and safety, she hoped and wished that her daughter, Sunshine , would NEVER have to do violence to another living being. Rose knew this was a naive thought, but she embraced it with all her heart. Some ideals were worth living for. --TO BE CONTINUED!--