Corsen Vale

Lt. Corsen Vale died in the Crownline — at least that is what the Solaris Marine memorial says, and what Admiral Mara Fenmar's old personnel file still claims when some clerk goes digging for grief they can exploit.

The living man does not correct the record. He walks three paces behind her in plain blues with no campaign ribbons he did not earn twice — once in public, once in secret. Broad-shouldered, sand-brown hair cut regulation-short, eyes the color of dock rust, hands that stay loose until they are not. Fleet photographers crop him out or blur him into "aide, unidentified." Spacers who notice assume he is another ghost the Navy prefers not to name.

He has been Mara's bodyguard for thirty-three years. He has never married. He does not explain why. When a senator's aide asks about the child she lost after the war, Corsen's jaw tightens and the aide finds somewhere else to be. He calls her Admiral on the deck and nothing else where anyone can hear.