The Moon Fortress

Chapter 2: Stand Your Ground

Kara climbed the stairs – leading her to the halls where the most important decisions on Krypton were made. Her heart beat faster and faster as she got closer to the room where she would be interviewed for her future career.

Kara felt as if her whole life had been about this day.

She took a deep breath and tried to brace herself. KAra had to show her best today. As she was walking through the last hallway, she thought about the past years and how she got to where she was now.

After Kara's excitement about Daxam on that night, she went to the Archives with her father (just as her mother had suggested), reading and watching all she could.

Kara even read enthusiastically about the royal prince who was named Mon-El, but after becoming more familiar with Daxam, she concluded that their sister world was complete opposite of everything Krypton stood for, and gradually her interest in seeing that place faded.

Instead, Kara found a new voice in her heart.

As Kara watched pictures of slaves and homeless children in the wake of recent wars, her heart was broken to see this level of carnage in the galaxy, by the hands of cruel Daxamites and other races such as Dominators.

From that day on, Kara decided that she would do anything in her power to make the galaxy a better place.

Therefore after graduating from her studies at eighteen, Kara worked closely at her mother's side until she turned twenty. After all the time she had spent watching the law, enforcing peace and keeping her home world safe, she also noticed how limited it was.

Kara slowly became aware of the underground networks in the galaxy that answered to no law and could conflict pain and misery anywhere they went. She followed the news of their latest activities with fire in her veins as she yearned to do something to put an end to their existence. And that was when Kara realized she could never be just like her mother – simply staying in a room and deciding the fate of petty thieves and criminals – while there were much bigger threats out there and she got attracted to the secret services in the government. Some organizations Kara suspected her aunt Astra most probably was involved with.

Kara always thought Astra was an army general, but she still remembered her talking about bad people whom her mother could never stop. One day when Kara was sixteen, Astra stopped coming to their house and to her shock, Kara's mother explained to her with sad eyes that Astra and her husband Non had committed treason and were both sentenced to Fort Rozz.

Aunt Astra had always been the closest person Kara had, next to her parents, her knowledge about the universe and experiences always amazed Kara, and when she was forced to leave, Kara felt her heart broke.

She always felt Astra's absence in her life. She was a special person to Kara and she could never forget her and couldn't bring herself to believe even for a second that her aunt had committed a crime against her people.

Kara had asked her mother about the exact reason why her aunt had to pay such a high toll, but never received a clear answer. Once, while she was working as her mother's apprentice, Kara used her code to access the files on Astra and Non, only to be denied access since the cases were classified for her. Kara asked and pressed her mother again after that, but her mother uncharacteristically refused to answer her with an angry tone and ordered Kara to stop looking for the details on the cases immediately. All these led Kara to doubt the Kryptonian justice system so much so, that she even sometimes questioned her mother's judgment.

Kara's decision to join the army after two years studying law, of course caused a rift between her and her parents. Since they always wanted Kara to walk in her mother's footsteps or at least join her father in the science guild, hearing Kara's decision on joining the army like her condemned aunt, truly shocked them.

Despite their best reasoning, Kara didn't back from her ambition and though they stopped arguing after a while, the disagreement remained.

As much as it hurt her to see herself at cross with two most important people in her life and the fact that she had to keep a lot of things from them, she stood her ground and after three years serving in the military with top marks, she was being interviewed to be recruited into a higher level in their army and government.

Kara stood before the closed door, swallowing hard. Sending a quick prayer the Rao, she opened the door with a slightly trembling hand, walking in with a raised chin and firm lips.