some of you were wanting some backstory about the scars and the twins. I hope it was worth the wait. serious warnings for those implications of not nice things happening that I alluded to. (torture, genetic modification, attempted ) take care if you're triggered by mentions.

He woke up curled up into the space Donghae's body had left on their moderately sized sleeping pad. Sighing, he relaxed and tried to sort out in his head what he was going to say, how he was going to say it, and in what order. He'd probably have to let the others guide his chronology for a while, his memory failing at points. He looked up at Donghae when he felt the soft fingers against his face and smiled.

“Did you rest well?” Donghae softly asked.

“Yes. Did you?”

Donghae nodded a quick agreement. “You look as though you were lost.”

Hyukjae shrugged a shoulder. “Not lost, just trying to sort things in my head,” he admitted. “I have to tell them how dangerous the Zhang are to Earth... but I don't know how? Like what do I tell them? There's so much...”

Donghae shrugged and moved closer to him, looping a leg over Hyukjae's. “I am sure that you will find the words with us there with you.”

“You don't have to, you know.”

“But we wish to be there. Our stories will add to yours. We are not so selfish as to wish our fate upon your home planet, and if this will prevent that fate, we will find words for which there is none. If we are there, then we all share our horrors together.”

Hyukjae smiled. “It also makes them a little less horrible.”

Donghae shrugged. “Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased.”

“I'm going to see if I can get that book for you,” Hyukjae said, recognizing the quote.

“It seems as if the writers of your world have some good advice,” Donghae admitted.

“Awake?” Amber asked from outside the cell that functioned as their room.

“Yes,” Donghae said.

“Would you like me go relieve Song Qian so that you can have ?”

Hyukjae still could never stop the giggles at the matter of fact tone. Burying his face against Donghae's chest, he laughed to himself.

“Do you want to have ?” Donghae asked him.

Hyukjae smiled and kissed Donghae. “Doesn't matter to me, I'm good either way.”

“Let us attend to informing your people first... and then we will have .”

His smirk was matched by Donghae's. “That sounds like a plan. Preferably with you inside me for at least a standard,” he whispered, nipping at Donghae's lips before pushing himself up on the sleeping pad and grabbing his pants and pulling them on. “We'll be up in a short time,” he told Amber through the open lattice of the cell wall.

Amber nodded and began to leave, only stopping when Hyukjae called her name.

“Your hair,” he reminded, seeing that her short hair was spiking in odd places from where she had been sleeping. Amber quickly patted her hair, trying to get it organized. With it only being five of them on the ship, no one really cared about the various states of dress or undress or how they looked after sleeping, but after a while, they had begun to remind each other of their appearance, knowing it was much easier to blend in and evade detection if they remembered to take care of that.

“Better?” she asked, her golden eyes wide and making her seem much younger and far more innocent than she was.

Hyukjae grinned and slipped out of the room to run his fingers through Amber's hair, pushing down the few pieces that were still sticking up. “There,” he announced.

Amber gave him a hug to express her thanks before hopping out through the permanently open airlock that was supposed to separate their cells from the main part of the ship.

“Is it time to awaken?” Zhou Mi asked sleepily as he stumbled through his open cell.

“Go back to sleep, you were up for nearly a full farn,” Hyukjae told the taller man. “Join us when you wake up naturally.”

Zhou Mi shook his head. “It is time to warn your people, I will be awake for that. I heard that your people might have brought a stimulant beverage...?”

“Coffee,” he identified immediately. “Hardly anyone in the military will go anywhere without it. It's really bitter, but I'll get you a cup.”

Zhou Mi nodded and went back into his room to retrieve his shirt.

When he and Donghae wandered into the main flight area, it was definitely more crowded than he was used to seeing. Song Qian sat relaxed in one of the pilot chairs that she'd spun around and she gifted them with a smile as they arrived. “Did you have a pleasant rest?” she greeted over the noise as the military personnel tried to interpret the data they were getting.

“We did,” Donghae replied. “Is the... coffee... available for Zhou Mi?” he politely asked.

“Why?” Admiral Don Thorn asked, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“He was up for nearly a full farn between watch and repairs.”

“How long is a farn?” Zoe asked.

Hyukjae blanked for a second and rolled his eyes upwards as he calculated. “Uh... hang on, I had the conversion worked out. One standard is about three hours and fifteen minutes, there's twelve standards in a farn... about thirty-nine hours,” he answered.

“And now my next medical question of why is he not sleeping after being up for almost a day and a half?” she continued. “Does he not need that much sleep?”

“Because he wants to be here for the talk we're going to have.”

“Something tells me that no one is going to particularly like what you have to say,” Samuel said, leaning on a large forearm against the holographic projection.

“Probably not, but you aren't just up here for a pleasure cruise in space,” Hyukjae tossed off. “Coffee?”

“Here,” Seungchul answered, holding out a thermos.

It still took another fifteen minutes before everyone was finally gathered and in various comfortable positions. Hyukjae was seated on the floor, leaning back on his hands while Donghae happily sipped on a cup of coffee next to him, apparently enjoying the bitter flavor. Amber had allowed the admiral to sit in her normal seat while she leaned comfortably against Song Qian's legs, and everyone else was comfortably spread out across the floor.

“All right Commander, what is your report?” the admiral asked.

“Do you want me to go in chronological order or order of threat?” Hyukjae asked seriously.

“Let's go in time,” Seungchul said. “It should at least let us get used to the players.”

“Right as I started to make another broadcast to Mission Control, Pioneer entered a wormhole. When I exited the wormhole, I was on a collision course with a Zhang Empire flagship, not that I knew that at the time. I did my best to avoid it, but Pioneer became caught on one of spikes they surround their flight deck with, and the entire back half was torn off. The engines with the wormhole generator impacted onto the flight deck, and tiny pieces of shrapnel cut through my spacesuit, making me pass out. I woke up, the Zhang found out I couldn't understand a damn thing, shoved the translator bugs up my nose and proceeded to interrogate me while I was still pretty loopy from oxygen deprivation.”

“Did they get any information?”

Hyukjae shrugged. “I have no idea, to be honest. I don't even remember what they were asking me, but apparently I didn't give them anything except my name, that I piloted Pioneer, and that I was from a planet called Earth. The next time I woke up it was right in the middle of a riot,” he complained, arching his eyebrows at Donghae.

The others of the crew all either smiled or laughed at the memory. Donghae's eyes turned up as he smiled into his coffee. “They should not have attempted to separate us,” he said in between sips of coffee. “Especially with as dangerous as they knew both of us to be.”

“Uh... you two...?” Samuel asked, gesturing between Hyukjae and Donghae.

“No. The former crew attempted to take Amber away,” Donghae said.

“Huh?”

Hyukjae snorted a laugh. “What would you do if the captain of a prison ship tried to take your twin sister away from you to have her be a concubine?”

“I... I'd start a riot as well,” Samuel replied ruefully.

“Is that how you came to command this ship?” the admiral asked.

“In a very roundabout kind of way, yes. It was several farn before it was just us on this ship,” Hyukjae said, glossing over some of the more unsavory points of the full takeover of the ship, including him almost getting spaced until Amber saved him just before he was shoved into an airlock by other former prisoners, and his own bouts with murder.

“What happened to everyone else?” his father asked.

Hyukjae blew out his breath. “Mostly dead. A few left while on restock missions or were returned to their home planets, but other than us... death seems to be the main way off.”

“You made mention of being wanted criminals, is it just taking over the ship? What kind of legal structure are we talking about?” Alex asked.

“Do you want the actual list or can we just gloss over it and say that it's whatever the Zhang accuse you of?” Hyukjae tried. “Zhou Mi?”

Zhou Mi shrugged an elegant shoulder. “It depends on where one is accused of the crime. On a planet, the administrator or a designate will hear the accusation and hear of evidence, and pass sentence there. On a ship... whatever punishment the captain feels is immediately carried out.”

Alex made a few notes in her notebook and nibbled on the top of her pen. “So there's no due process for prisoners? You can just be accused of whatever and punishment is immediately performed?”

“Essentially yes. Does that matter?”

“Well it would go into the determination if the United States would be willing to offer asylum to those accused unjustly...”

Song Qian laughed. “So they'll just raze your planet for harboring fugitives.”

Zhou Mi nodded. “The Zhang do not recognize asylum, or the fractured status of individual nation-states. I am only familiar with the term because of my association with Hyukjae.”

“Let's table that discussion about legal systems for now,” the admiral said. “No asylum and no trials, got it. What kind of options would we have if a flagship shows up in orbit?”

“Join or die,” Hyukjae said. “There are several systems that are only loosely aligned with the Zhang. The Zhang show up, the planet offers tribute of whatever resources they have, the Zhang go away. That would probably be Earth's best option in that occurrence, unless something completely drastic happens.”

“Drastic how?” the admiral questioned.

“Drastic as if someone gets twitchy and launches a nuke into orbit – which doesn't do a damn thing by the way – the Zhang will see that as a declaration of war and depending on the captain's mood, they'll either raze the highest population cities and accept a surrender, or they'll raze a few cities and then drop onto the planet to accept tribute in the form of children and babies to be used as slaves. Staying hidden is the best option.”

With that sobering reality, Hyukjae waited for the next question. “Out of curiosity,” Seungchul said. “What exactly are you accused of?”

“Depends which of us you're asking,” Hyukjae said. “I'm not trying to be deliberately obstructing here. The amounts of this will vary for each of us, but I think we all have destruction of at least one Zhang ship, murder, commandeering, piracy, looting, theft, inciting riots... what did I miss?” he asked rhetorically.

“Distribution of weaponry,” Song Qian said.

“Harboring criminals,” Zhou Mi added.

“Illegal movement between worlds,” Amber said after thinking about it for a moment.

“Evading punishment,” Donghae finished.

Hyukjae nodded. “Yeah that's about it.”

“Is there a crime you haven't been accused of?” Alex asked, her pen again hanging out of .

“Oh no, that's what we've actually done,” Hyukjae clarified. “Our accused crimes list is a lot longer, including things that are just invented.”

“I enjoyed the one about us blowing up a star system,” Zhou Mi said, his lips quirking. “I want to know how we did that.”

“You and me both,” Hyukjae replied with a laugh. “Because the last time I checked, that thing was just an uninhabited asteroid.”

“Okay, yet another discussion to be shelved,” the admiral broke in. “What happened after you took command of this ship?”

Hyukjae's smile faltered a little and he felt Donghae's hand slip into his. He'd really kind of hoped to avoid this part of the story with the distracting side story. “We ran from world to world, trading where we could for needed supplies, and stealing from the Zhang for whatever else we needed. We kind of established ourselves as shipping dealers that didn’t ask questions and would be willing to transport anyone or anything for a price.” He paused and swallowed. “Then I got caught. Apparently my earlier assertions that I was from a world that no one knew was passed on to higher ups in the chain of authority. It saved my life, in a way.”

“But?”

Hyukjae sighed and stood. Grabbing the hem of his shirt, he lifted it along his left side, exposing the scarring across his rib cage and spreading across his back. Pulling the shirt off entirely, he shivered at the cool air (or tried to convince himself that it was the cool air and not the remembered sensations) and showed off the dark ink that was embedded into his skin across his upper back and the scars that trailed down from it. He heard the high gasps, but took a moment to himself facing away from everyone by pulling his shirt back on.

“That,” he answered simply, not trusting himself to look at his family.

“What happen