"Mutiny. Against the kenjah." I repeated. "That'll be suicide." Schrotanic butted in, his voice muffled by the bag over his head. Reneesh lifted the bag and held Schrotanic 's head with his arms. "One more word out of that shucked mouth of yours, I'll make sure not another word would come out of your mouth. You feel me?" Reneesh asked. Schrotanic appeared to fall back at the harsh rebuke. "I feel you." He replied, sulking.

Montwik and I continued our discussion. "A mutiny isn't going to be easy, right? I asked. "Gathering soldiers isn't going to be a tough task. We've got almost all the bases on this planet and the Crux Army with us." He replied. "Where is this home planet of yours." I asked. A couple of days away if we travel with our ships. The crux amry's ships are slower than ours. Would take approximately five days from here." He replied. "What's the tough part?" I asked. "Not all the Vortex soldiers support you. The defences on the photrox , the home planet, are very powerful. So is their army. We do have a few spies on the inside, but they would be overpowered my a massive margin if they start any kind of mutiny from the inside." He replied, sighing. "That means we're going to have a tough resistance, right?" I asked him, even though I knew the answer to that. "Yeah. Very tough resistance. The soldiers are highly trained, especially around the residence of the kenjah." He replied. "What kind of numbers are we looking at?" I asked. "About a million soldiers from the Vortex Army considering we force the non supporters to help us. About a million and a half from the Crux Army. That totals it to two and a half million soldiers on our side. The photrox has an army of one and a half million highly trained soldiers. As I already told you before, their defences are very tough to penetrate through. It would take a genius to figure out a way to get past those defences." He said. "Only if we had Leo." I said, remembering how easily he could hack into their outer defence systems. Montwik fell silent at my last statement, guilt probably consuming him.

We sat silent for a few minutes. It was past midnight by now and the rest of the crew had fallen asleep, exhaustion consuming them. "You said that The Crux and the Vortex used to be one. And then you separated on the basis of ideological differences. What exactly happened?" I asked him.

"We were once, one big happy family. We had another kenjah back then. He was very kind hearted and never would hurt a person. All the citizens were happy with how things were, except a few. Those few led a coup which resulted in the assassination of the previous kenjah and the current kenjah stole the throne from him and established his dictatorship. You humans developed a type of government called a democracy. Unfortunately, we didn't have such kind of a government. Ours was a dictatorship from the beginning. And then people weren't happy with the new kenjah . Things got way out of hand very easily. And then came the issue of the cloning. And then the discovery of the fourth dimension. Wars broke out between different groups. And finally, the side, which is now the Crux decided that it could not stay on the same planet of the Vortex. In fact, it was the Crux which entered this universe first and occupied a planet. There are three planets in universe, which has life on them. I'm case you didn't know it, the Vortex has the power to even create matter and create a whole new universe too. This universe is huge, yet it has only three planets with life on them. The other life forms have been exterminated. Out of the three planets, two belong to the Vortex and one to the Crux. The Vortex invaded a planet and made it theirs during the beginning of the war here. The Crux followed the message of harmony and peace, but we're dragged into the war by the Vortex. They tried to strike a deal with the Vortex but the latter chose war over peace. The Crux believes that any kind of life form, be it complex or simple, intelligent or just ordinary life forms, must be left to evolve on their own without any kind of hinderance by the more powerful civilisations. But the Vortex had violated it by cloning more civilisations and destroying them when they want to. So, the Crux Army has been at war ever since. But it's going to end soon, one way or another. We've lost enough soldiers, we're going to make our final stand."

"I don't like the way you're saying that." I replied. If I had to choose sides, I would have chosen the Crux side without blinking an eye. But Montwik made it sound too perfect. He claims that the Crux was against the war from the beginning, but from what I saw, it was the Crux who attacked the Vortex base we were in and injured Schrotanic in the process. Which made me wonder when Schrotanic became so silent all of a sudden. He was usually the kind who would keep talking his butt of non stop. I got up my seat, walked over to him and sat beside him. I took the bag of his head. He was still awake and he looked at me, right in the eyes. "Why did you do it?" I asked him. "Why did you kill Leo?" "I had no other choice." He replied. "You had the chance of saving Leo. You could have turned off the program. You could have avoided this." I said. "You don't understand." He replied. "Understand what?" I asked him.

"You'll get to know about it soon enough, captain. You'll get to know everthing."

**