"Did you hear about the commander?"

"I heard that he was disgraced."

"Do you know why he was disgraced, but still allowed to serve?"

"I have only heard the vaguest of rumours, and from what they instill, he deserves to be shot."

"That is an unfair judgement."

"Untill I know more, that is my opinion."

"There is more to the story, I was there, he trusted me with this secret."

"Then tell me."

"The commander had a wife and a child. They lived on his home planet. Eight months into the Ironius campaign, he had the enemy leader under his targets. He commanded two killships then, I was his captain. The leader had learned of his family. He ordered them to be captured. This leader was feral, brutal and cruel. He raped the commanders daughter repeatedly. His wife was sent to the prisons for two full weeks. She tried to commit suicide many times only to be passed to a new inmate. The enemy leader then displayed the broken bodies to the public. That caught the commanders eye. He was furious, nay, I can't desrcibe how the man felt, nor shall I try. By the time the commander made his way, he learnt his wife and daughter were both pregnant to this barbaric leader. Again, how does a man still live throught that? At this time, he was above the planet. The leader had another couple of henious plans. He had let the allied forces know he was on the planet. They were poised to strike. This leader told the commander that he had a friend of the commanders with him. He showed the woman to the commander. She was a fair woman, with nothing exceptional going for her. She meant alot to him for the commander froze. They never freeze, but he was stock still for minutes. She was unharmed where as his family had been mutilated and embaressed beyond imagination, but this sight had stirred him to an even greater anger. The enemy gave him a choice. He would deliver himself to the commander if he destroyed the allied forces and killed his family and this woman or he would give him this woman if he killed his family and the allied forces and let the leader live."

"I'm starting to see now."

"Yes you are. The commander thought about it for a long time. In the end he chose the woman.

"He chose the woman?"

"Yes. The leader was caught three weeks later, executed, with his manhood down his own throat. No one can prove anyone even still to this day.

"I understand now, partly."

"He loves this woman. More then words can say and even more then actions can show. He would not only die for this woman, but he would kill everyone in the galaxy to save her with his bare hands. That is a love that nothing can come between."

"Where is she now, if this is the first I have heard of her?" The man telling the story now looked sad, infact he had a tear running down his face.

"What happened?"

"She left him a month after. She ran off with a nobleman. She never loved him back. Never. And he knew it the whole time."

"You said he loves her?"

"Yes, he still does, and he lives now only to see her well. That is the commanders story. Not even High Command could drive him to the brink.

"That is very sad."

"More then you could believe."