Sheppard stood, arms folded and quietly let Mal let the memories flood out of his mouth. He knew that this would be a once in a lifetime moment with Mal, that rare glimpse of the core of a man who zealously guarded his secrets.

“The war done changed men, made ‘em hard an’ cold as ice inside after seeing what it done to their comrades. Not many a folk you can find that’s not be touched somewhat by the war and be the same. Zoe an’ I been through a lot together, and nothin’ ain’t gonna change that, but there be some things that Zoe don’t know, and some things I don’t know how she a gonna take.”

“We was caught in a tight situation with our unit one morning, Alliance portals all around us. Weren’t no way out that’s Zoe and I could see, and suddenly we was just bombarded by fire and good men were dying left and right. Weren’t nothing we could do. We got ourselves captured and thrown in a retention cell. Weren’t too bad, didn’t treat right, but weren’t as bad as some of the stories we heard trickle down from ones that had been captured. Most of us were badly injured, and needed medical help. Zoe and I bandaged up those we could with our uniforms, ripping stuff together, trying to stop some of the bleeding and what not. But we were all in bad shape.”

“Spent a good day in the retention cell before they moved us into a processing station. Fancy Alliance uniforms all around staring down at us, like they were better or somethin’. Made one’s hair stand up all over with anger and outrage at what they thoughts of us. Don’t rightly know how it happened, but it got stuck in some big wigs head that our unit was a holdin’ some kind of useful strategic info from up tops of the Independents. They took us one by one and questioned over and over. ‘Course it was all stupid ‘cause none of us knew a gorram thing, we was just a foot unit.”

“Second round of questions fer me, and it were different. Wasn’t taken to the place they had questioned us before. Actually think I rode a bit in a transport ship, out to one of the supply stations