Free Twin Stars 1: Ascension by Robyn Paterson

him as he sat down. “It has some of the best drunk chicken in town, and I always stop here when I can.”
    He gave a polite smile and shook his head, “No, not at all. It’s fine. In fact, I’ll take you up on your suggestion.”
    Tysen called up an AR window of the cafe menu, selected what he wanted, ordered, and then let it snap shut as he looked around thoughtfully.
    “My, things have changed, when I joined the service this was still just a riverside park.”
    “Yes,” she followed his gaze. “A few years ago the city sold it to a developer with connections, now the whole area is alive with construction. My husband and I just bought an apartment on the other side of the valley.”
    He nodded. “Weren’t there some laws protecting it? I seem to remember marching in some protest to save it when I was a child.”
    She gave him a sad, sympathetic look. “Lieutenant, I hardly think I need to tell you what greases the working of government in our day and age.”
    He took that as his cue.
    “Yes, in every day and age I should think.” He said with acceptance. “But, I should congratulate you on your new home. Give me your transfer code before we go, and I’ll send you a home-warming gift to help you celebrate.”
    “Oh, you don’t have to,” she said politely. “But, we will definitely appreciate it. Thank you.”
    He shook his head, “not at all.”
    “Well, let’s talk about your case, then.”
    An AR window requesting a joint link popped up at the edge of Tysen’s vision, and he accepted it. This would allow the defense lawyer and himself to share a limited cooperative AR workspace in the air over the table and around them. Turning the restaurant table into a virtual office space that only they could see.
    Once he’d accepted, several semi-transparent floating AR windows appeared over the table between them- each of them data files. Tysen could see one labeled with his name, and two labeled with military file codes that he assumed were the cases for the prosecution and defense.
    “We talked before through a link, but I wanted to do the real planning face to face,” she told him. “We need to work on a strategy to get you out of this mess.”
    “Besides my actions being justified?”
    “Means and ends, is it Lieutenant?” She gave him another tired, sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, but that may not be how the Court of Enquiry sees it. They are just as likely to see this as a money making opportunity as they do a trial, and from what I see in your file your family may not have much to give.”
    Tysen frowned. “Yes, my father saw to that when he died and left us neck-deep in gambling debts.”
    “Ahh, that’s right.” She said, as if remembering something. “I wanted to ask you about that. I read your file, but there isn’t more than a brief mention of it. How was that resolved?”
    Tysen shrugged. “I talked with his creditors and arranged a solution.”
    The defense council’s eyebrow went up. “Just like that? You must have been what- thirteen?”
    “Twelve.”
    “And you walked into a shark’s pit and arranged for the debts to be paid- just like that?”
    Tysen smiled, remembering how scared he’d been at the time, facing the bosses of the underground gambling houses, and yet he’d still held his ground and made them take him seriously. It was one of the proudest moments of his youth.
    “Hardly,” he told her. “I had something they wanted more than money, and I used that as leverage.”
    “Which was?”
    “A title. While we were indeed drowning in debt, our family had once been quite noteworthy. I arranged for one of their children to be added to our family registry- something that gave them legitimacy that no common born could ever hope to achieve.”
    She stared at him, shocked. “Wow. Remind me not to play poker with you. You did that at 12, and your family agreed?”
    “My mother…Didn’t have much choice.”
    In truth, it had been the thing that had driven the