New Evidence

There are now 4 guns ready to shoot, if one of them made any sudden moves we could be looking at a bloodbath. Ljubiša was scared out of his mind, while Khalid reaffirmed his seriousness. In fact, Khalid was never as serious as he was at this moment. Class Lupus never saw this side of him. He and Ljubiša were always the jokers in the class.

Roy and Ana wanted to pretend like they didn't care about the entrance of these two, it wasn't the shaking Ljubiša that concerned them, Khalid was the one who intimidated him. The big guy never got exceptional scores in marksmanship but he was close enough that he wouldn't miss.

"Everyone, let's all calm down" Brigham still hoped for a peaceful resolution.

"I'm perfectly calm!" Khalid yelled out, sweat dripping from his forehead. "As guards, me and Ljubiša were tasked by Mok to keep the peace in this ship and that's exactly what we're gonna motherf**king do! You two, put your guns down! We heard you yelling all the way from the escape pods, we came to check things out and saw you two in this standoff. What the hell is wrong with y’all? We were all friends just a moment ago."

"I was never friends with this commie. I detested her from the moment Lupus began" Roy snapped "Now that she finally showed her true colors! She killed Mok! She is a Soviet spy!"

"Funny coming from the actual culprit." Ana shook her head. "I hope the money NATO gave you to kill him was worth it. Unfortunately, you won't get to see it."

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Brigham raised his voice. He decided to take a more aggressive approach, he had enough of trying to emulate Lei Mei and de-escalate. "Both of you are prepared to kill without the all facts being straight. We will figure out who's behind this, but not like this. Khalid, Ljubiša!" Brigham's head turned to them. "I will count to three, if the two of them haven't lowered their guns by then, shoot them. I will take responsibility for their deaths. I ordered you to do it."

Before Brigham started his countdown, Ana and Roy finally gave in and placed their guns on the floor. They were ready to kill, but not to die. Brigham finally managed to break the stalemate. Ljubiša came up to them and took away their pistols.

"You guys are like totally insane!" Hitomi yelled out now that the bloodbath had been averted. "What the hell Ana, what is wrong with you. You always were borderline psychotic but this is too far even for you. God why did I befriend such a maniac, will you shoot me next cause I'm Japanese, and when someone does something bad to you and they happen to be Japanese."

Ana felt like she had been stabbed in the heart. Hitomi was the only person in class Lupus she considered a friend. "That's easy for you to say," Ana spoke in a lowered tone, trying to hide the emotional wound inflicted upon her. "Both of your parents are alive and well. Nobody in class is celebrating and justifying their death."

"Bo ho, whatever. Send your sob story to Hollywood, maybe they make a movie out of it along with the 7 million other sob stories in the world. The same goes for you too Roy, you are just as deranged as her. What part of the rules, since you hold them to be so important, says that you take a gun and try to shoot the first person you think is the culprit without any evidence or investigation based on your assumptions of her ethnicity. You know, maybe check out how that logic goes for African-Americans in the United States."

Ana and Roy were at a loss for words. Both of them were hurt and fuming at Hitomi's callous disregard for the deaths and suffering of their respective families. Her unempathetic stance and devaluing of their experiences, made the rage they had for each other be briefly directed at Hitomi. The worst part of the pink-haired girl's rant was that it had a shattering truth to it.

Yes, they both jumped with the intent to kill purely based on prejudice. A prejudice founded upon their ethnic backgrounds and the political beliefs of their parent. There wasn't any other piece of evidence that painted a picture of guilt. It started from an assumption of Cold War involvement of NATO or the Warsaw Pact that came from the dead instructor Mok.

"I can't take this anymore," Lei Mei dropped to the floor. Her legs gave out after this prolonged scene of stress and conflict. "I want to go home."

"Same here," Hitomi shook her head. "I'm going to go for a walk."

Brigham grabbed her arm to stop her, "No you can't go alone. We have to move around in pairs, the culprit could attack you while you're alone, or you could be the culprit and sabotage more of the ship. Someone needs to go with you"

"Again with the orders, I don't get why you boss us around, you're not Mok, none of us made you in charge." Hitomi pulled her arm out of Brigham's grasp and frowned at him.

"Since we have no captain on board and I'm the deputy, that makes me the leader of the ship and the class."

"Oh, you're doing a real good job of leading us. Real swell work Brigham, fantastic. If this is you at your best, sheesh, I don't want to wish upon my worst enemy your mid-effort. Besides how did Ana and Roy get guns anyway? Shouldn't the weapons be locked in the armory?"

Ljubiša nervously laughed and said: "Yeah I guess they should be there. I must've forgotten to lock the armory when I was with Khalid. Oops."

"Oops?" Hitomi widened her eyes in disbelief and anger. "OOPS?! That's all you have to say? Really. You are the most colossal screw-up in the universe. Mok is rolling in his grave for giving your thieving and lying ass a second chance. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't steal something from that armory."

"That's enough Hitomi!" Brigham snapped. "I won't have you berating the crew. You said your piece now shut up. That's an order."

Hitomi stuck a middle finger into Brigham's face and walked away. She moved towards Lei Mei pulling her off the ground. "You're coming with me, I don't want to be in this room anymore and apparently I have to take someone along." Hitomi pulled Lei Mei out of the mess hall with her. Lei Mei didn't protest, she was still trying to sink in all of the events that had transpired. The two girls left the mess hall leaving the rest to stay there.

Not long after Roy and Ana started arguing about politics. Despite not being armed anymore they wanted to continue fighting, but through a new verbal avenue. Khalid and Ljubiša checked out and didn't listen to a word they were saying. In their opinion, the two could do whatever they wanted as long as they weren't armed with weapons. Brigham still attempted to mediate unsuccessfully.

"So what I am saying is, the US invasion of the Hope colony is actually perfectly legal under international law. It was done with permission from the U.N. security council" Roy talked down to Ana. "You have no right to complain about it, there is no legal basis for you to have any condemnation against that invasion. Your father may have been killed in the process but he was killed with no rules broken!"

"I see no issue with the famine of the Sutra colony,” Ana shrugged in response. “Under the Rhodes agreement signed by Nixon and Brezhnev in 1971. on the spheres of influence NATO and the Warsaw pact would have in space, the Sutra colony was under the Soviet sphere. You Americans agreed to it, so the Soviets had the right to do in their sphere whatever they wanted. Just like the Americans do in their own."

"The Rhodes agreement is not a legal document, but a political agreement. Doesn't have the same power or binding effect. The spheres of influence are nothing more than gentlemen's agreements and the Rhodes agreement falls into that category. The brutal famine of the Sutra colony was a violation of the UN charter and a violation of human rights."

Ana shook her head at Roy, "The UN security council voted while the Russian and Chinese delegations weren't present, they were not allowed to exercise their veto power. Secondly, the spheres of influence are rules of engagement in the Cold War. I have my backyard and you have yours and we do with it what we want. The Hope colony was never agreed to be in the U.S. sphere of influence and so they broke the unwritten rules of the Cold War and almost caused a nuclear galactic war."

Brigham jumped into their conversation: "Don't you both find it at least a little bit reprehensible that you both got offended at how Hitomi disregarded the deaths of your family members and now you both are finding ways to delegitimize the suffering of the other. You are both making inhumane, esoteric, and repulsive arguments as to why the suffering of one's family was somehow justified in this Cold War play? Shouldn't you both find some connection and common ground given that both of your families were victims of this self-justifying cruel Cold War?"

Without a hint of irony, the two continued arguing. A continuous cycle of denial of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 'The victims that are not from my side are not worth considering', was the mantra they both stuck to. Brainwashed to hate one another and to dehumanize their fellow man.

Not too long into their argument Curro and Emidio rushed into the mess hall with big news.

"Guys we did it!" Curro flailed around a piece of paper. "We analyzed the shrapnel from the bomb! It's a Russian-made bomb! The Soviets are behind this!"

Before Ana could even properly react, Khalid jumped at her.

"KHALID SLAP!" The huge green-haired boy's hand came into contact with Ana's face as he yelled out his signature move. His hand came with full force and it instantly knocked her unconscious.

Everyone gathered around her, they had seemingly found their culprit.