“Some resent all soldiers, but mostly those people are angry about the wars on Earth, not at the soldier who fought. Most of our people treat all soldiers with great respect.” I smiled as he shivered beneath my gentle exploration, and I recognized my actions as what they were, a claiming of my own. “Whether they were wounded or not.”
The silence of the men around me was stifling and I pulled my hand back and cleared my throat. I looked around the oddly shaped room. It was circular, with dark glass of some sort from waist to ceiling. The floor was solid gray and smooth, like marble. I saw no door or exterior views. We could have been on a spaceship or hundreds of feet below ground. I had no way of knowing. “So, why are we here? Why did you bring me to this horrible place?”
The room wasn’t
