---
"I do not want that," Kai said honestly. "Ruler of all. It sounds like a terrible job. Too many meetings. Too much responsibility."
Vorak chuckled and winced again.
"So you say now," he said. "I said something similar when I was your age. Then I learned that if you do not sit at the table, the idiots at the table decide what to do with your life anyway. You may not want the crown. It may want you."
He shook his head slightly.
"Philosophy can wait," he said. "For now, I will take my battered bones and my equally battered pride and go write a very careful report that explains how I threw an eighth star general and four thousand men at a rock and it threw them back at me."
"You could lie," Kai said.
"I could," Vorak said. "But then you would hear about it eventually, and I have just decided I would prefer you wave when you see me next, instead of aiming that spear of yours at my ankles on sight."
They both smiled again, small and real.
Vorak extended his uninjured hand.
