“Why?” Tina asked, not noticing the different skin tone Bette had.

Bette smiled. This woman was cute. “Because I’m half-African American.”

“Oh yeah, now I see it but that makes you half white so actually you should raise a half category.” Tina joked.

Bette chuckled. “Actually, yes.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Tina asked, she wanted to know some more about Bette and also knew that by showing interest, Bette would trust her and maybe tell her information about Serranoff more willingly. She knew it was a risk for the darker woman to reveal that information. She had read that people couldn’t say a bad word about the Emperor.

“Yes, I do. An older sister and a younger sister and brother.” Bette told her.

“What are their names?” Tina wanted to know.

“Aikatrine, Theophania and Theodoros. I just call them Kit, Tiff and Theo but Father prefers to call them Kathy, Tiffany and Theodore.”

“How old are they?”

“19, 17 and 14.” Bette told her.

“How old are you?” Tina wanted to know.

“18. You?”

“19.” Tina answered. “Hey, Bette, do you know something about how Serranoff wants to invade Vidar?”

Bette looked at Tina. “Well, everyone knows he is trying to get as many men in the military as possible. Even boys as young as 16 have to be in the military for 5 years. They’ll try to surround the planet and then attack all at the same time; they’ll try to do it as fast as possible and try to surprise them.”

“How do you feel about that? That they’ll invade a planet.”

“I don’t like it because then those people, who now live so freely, live in the world that should be an example for this one, will also be suppressed by Serranoff. It’s sad, really.”

“How could Vidar beat the military?” Tina asked.

“Why do you want to know all this?” Bette wanted to know.

“Because you are the first person I’ve seen in 2 years and I want an update of what is going on.”

Bette smiled. “The military is very divided. You have off course the categories who only fight for their own group but within you have other small groups: the black people, the white people, the religious people, the none religious people, the married folks, the unmarried… I can keep going. They don’t stick up for each other. If the other military will do anything to save someone, even if that person has other believes or features than they have, then they are at least… 10 times stronger than our military who only think about themselves and their group mates.” Bette explained.