Sunset: Then, Now, Tomorrow (Maintenance & Role-Play)

[Sunset]

Erika & Demi's House, Botany Bay, Chuh-Yu...

"How much deeper are we going?"

It wasn't the first question Demi wanted to ask but it was the first one that wouldn't lead directly to more questions - questions she wasn't sure she wanted answers to. In fact they had been going down the same hole for nearly five minutes now, the lights flashing by as the car descended through the unseen shaft. They were not alone either with Alex standing behind them, a strange knowing smile on her lips, and the two Huskies standing on either side of the door as she might imagine bodyguards would while the housecats curled around their feet, heads and triangle ears constantly moving.

The real question she wanted to ask was 'How did you build this?' but she probably already knew the answer; Occasionally she'd seen a battered gray hovervan parked out at the curb, a pair of short gray-faced individuals with large black eyes wearing gray coveralls and painter's caps pulled down low sitting in the front seat. The assumption was that they were there to work on one of the other houses in the mostly upscale neighborhood but she'd seen the same come and go during the remodeling when they'd moved in but yet she'd never seen them working. Nor was there a name or brand on the side of the van; Anonymous and discrete.

"Linear, or plotted?" An evasive answer but there was another effort at evasion as well as the car suddenly shifted direction. Now it was moving at a hard angle sideways, the translucent panels on the wall - or were they lights? - flashing from left to right and still no indication of depth or floor. "We'll end up about two hundred klicks down."

"How is that possible? Won't that put us inside the mantle?"

"Difficult," Erika admitted, "But not impossible. After all," She reached out and touched an invisible panel embedded next to the door, which promptly turned invisible, "Someone else already did it."

Demi's jaw dropped as an alien landscape suddenly spread out in front of them, the pod whizzing along in a track seemingly suspended from nothing in particular. Hanging lights pierced the darkness to a limited extent but she could make out strange geometric shapes looming in the twilight as the walls came close only to retreat again. Here and there the dull red glow of molten stone indicated they were indeed as deep as she claimed though the regular shapes of the dim patches said they were constrained and held inside some manner of enclosure.

"They power everything. Thermal generators. We're still not exactly sure what everything is..." Another shape began to move across the landscape, this time a more familiar smooth curve that led to a rise and a splash of curved letters half-obliterated by the curve of the saucer. Nacelles followed and the enormous depths of the space were revealed as not one but four more starships, the black shape of their hulls unfamiliar to the diplomat, passed in silence. "But its been quiet for a very long time - A million years."

Which dated the caverns, as much of the other mysteries of the Ares system, to the era of the fall of the Kal-En-Vesho. It didn't answer the question of how they'd managed to get starships several hundred kilometers under the surface, but once a thing can be known to be done, doing it again is much easier.

A great loop of ribbed black metal passed, oily and dark, and she was reminded of the architecture the trilats seemed genetically disposed to prefer, "Did they build this?"

"Probably - perhaps for the same reasons we're using. Secrecy and safety. It differs from the Sh'Dos Regenerator they found on Shiva and more closely matches the interior of the ship on Rime. It's not a perfect match but each Kal-En-Vesho made their place their own - it was their nature, even moreso than we do."

"What did they fear that they would build this place?"

The answer was a shrug, "Who knows? The Nameless holds some secrets very close. The Kal-En-Vesho fell, though, and this place survived. Perhaps what they feared wasn't as dangerous as they thought."

"Why are we here?" That was the ultimate question and one that Demi had waited to ask until, by coincidence, they had arrived at their destination. The car came to a stop and the doors opening, dogs bounding out to take up immediate flanking positions but there was no danger, only a pair of Marines in power armor only a few steps away and beside another door that led into a facility that seemed to float alone in the midst of a vast gulf.

"We'll know in," Erika checked an invisible watch held forward by the butler, "Seventeen hours, sixteen minutes..."

[Sunset]

Port Ha'Bainda, Blishi'i System (GEC-1342224), Blishi'i United Federation Space, Canis Major II Dwarf Galaxy...

It was rare that a ship's Quartermaster had the opportunity to be an explorer. Every starship had one of course - tasked with maintaining and replenishing the ship's stores, they kept the vessel and crew in everything from spare parts to spare sheets. Requisitions would be put in, requests made, and inventory logged but aside from the Armory Officer under - or sometimes as well as - the Quartermaster, the duties were typically dull and routine. Today was that rare day for Lieutenant Chad Unskowki.

"One for one," he offered, pushing his glasses up on his nose again. Time after time they had slipped down as he'd bent to look closely at what were supposedly seeds spread out across the desk of his opposite between the two. He didn't need them, he merely preferred them as well as the heavy jacket with its numerous pockets and loops that he wore as a matter of habit over his uniform. "Straightforward, no muss, no fuss."

One of their seeds for one of his. It was probably a generous offer on his part; There would be dozens of worlds within the wider Blishi'i Federation but only one Ojeni and its smaller - and thus more valuable - collection of seeds from a galaxy far, far away. Undoubtedly Ha'Bainda's Quartermaster would go on to sell them or forward them to some government laboratory where they would be cloned, grown, and distributed to those interested in the plants they would grow into as he would in return. Without knowing all the details of the value of the seeds the fairest deal was the simplest, "How about it?"

"Hmm, one for one? And growing instructions?"

Unskowki held up a card, "Right here."

He waved it over a tiny black seed and a holographic plant appeared, instructions reeling off beside it as the soil conditions, environmental requirements, light spectrum, and other needs of a common poppy plant were displayed. An apple tree followed and laid out between them was a wide selection from across the Milky Way. That had been an interesting assignment; Ojeni didn't specifically carry seeds but there were house plants, muffins, bags of potatoes, and any number of other sources if the mind was bent to the task.

"Then you shall have the same - the deal is made. Now, you were mentioning something about a communications satellite? We have many of those but I presume;" Chad nodded, the presumption was correct, "That this is more than that..."

[Sunset]

GEC-786453Ac (Bestek), Alpha/Gamma Border Region...

There was exactly one official port on Bestek and this was it; A low circular structure with inset windows carved out of heavy slabs of blast-proof acrylic and fitted with louvered panels to deflect the searing hot jets from the adjacent landing and launch pads away. With one of each - landing and launch - as well as a dusty and little-used wheels-down runway on the four side of the building, it wasn't much of anything. Along the access road that led up to the archway and inside sat a double-row of both aircraft and spacecraft in various states of what could be generously called disrepair. That someone had at some time bothered to arrange them in those neat lines was startling but that trees had grown up, around, and through some of them was indication that the age of caring had long past. Set behind these, with paths of rusted hull plating, crushed stone, and dried mud paths to link them to the road, were a half-dozen ramshackle buildings in the same style as the port; As if someone had plunked down a few upturned flower pots in the middle of a garden choked with weeds and garbage.

Some were abandoned, others were not, and in one a Dwarf stood over a desk with a broken leg with a flashlight in her mouth casting the dimmest of lights while she rifled through the contents. It was similarly dark outside and through the open window she could occasionally hear the scrawl of a cat or the calls of revelry as patrons from one of the nearby bars spilled out onto the streets to pass their good cheer onto others - or just plain pass out. Why she was there was an answer of patience - she'd waited outside the house in the little ramshackle village for someone to come calling. Or at least the sensor strips she'd planted had. Meli herself had gone off for a fuck-around with her boyfriend in a romantic and much less filth-infested orchard outside of town. After she'd had her fill, he was dispatched back to her scout ship and she reviewed the sensor logs. The owner had come and gone but finally he'd been joined for a short while by another in a grimy coverall and toting a pair of packages.

One had been girlie magazines in a slim brown bag, the other had been a plastic container half-concealed inside another. The first one had been received with a snaggle-toothed grin and a joke that was almost as disgusting while the second had been slipped inside a shirt that looked like it hadn't been washed since it was made and replaced with a couple credit sticks. Neither had commented on the departure of the next link in the chain via guided space rock; Either they didn't know or didn't care. Shitty luck, that.

"Noothiin haar," Meli said, glancing up towards the window once again. A group of five noisy types had left the closest watering hole just a few minutes earlier and by her estimation - and the software in her head - it would take them just about that long to reach the tenement assuming one of them was the resident. But this was where the courier had ended up and this was where she'd now search. "Maak seens raaht? Gooota geet thaa stuuuf oof the plaanet someowe!"

But there was nothing; The desk had been used at one point for filing away maintenance logs for the various flights to and from the small port but if there had been a flight in the last decade it had not needed either maintenance or a paper record. Either way, she was interested in whatever might lead her to the next point in the chain, "Laahkly enoh he ort aster..."

*Click;* "Хөөе, та юу Зөндөө хийж байна вэ?"

Spinning on her toes she turned, catching just the glimpse of a half-familiar figure standing in the doorway with his hand on the light switch and a pistol in one hand that he had taken from his half-open coverall. There was something in his eye though and she was impossibly fast. A glance past her to where the window was set and currently closed. An ally? Someone to grab her if she bolted. The thought had barely crossed her mind when the coat rack that had stood next to the desk hit him square in the chest. Hurled with incredible speed, the metal tubes that had once and now held a ratty old jacket snapped off as the shaft plowed through his breastbone and out the other side. The force of the blow tossed him backwards and such was the strength of her arm that the rack burst through the door and dangled him there as the first cough of dying blood hacked from his lungs.

A cry from just outside the window was strangled as her open fingers shot through the metal, grabbing the second by his throat and crushing the alarm as he was yanked off his feet. Over her shoulder he went, pulled bodily through the remains of the shutters to fly through the air with a crushed trachea and a startled yelp. Arms and legs flailed but the only purchase he found was the base of the coat stand. Once again the legs snapped off from the force of it and he slid down the length to find himself in a dying embrace, two lovers coughing up the poison as their spirits fled.

"Ариун Зөндөө!"

There was a third, which possibly meant a fourth and a fifth. Five friends out enjoying the proceeds of an illicit trade. Two were dead, a third was on the run, and she was out the window in a bounce of her long black braid. The next man had already turned, flipped on his heel, but as the next foot came down she reached out and violated him for only the last time, grabbing his tailbone and ripping his spine free from his body in a single gesture. For a moment he stood support by her arm - a puppet on a stick - as the last spasmodic impulses told arms and legs there was still a reason to run. A jerk and the corpse was flung aside, the two men a dozen feet away looking up in shock as their friend hit the side of the house with a dead-meat thump. One had been in the moment of lighting a cigarette and the lighter still flamed as he dropped it in wide-eyed shock. He didn't get the chance to even shout or draw in that last nicotine-laced breath as she spun, heel out, and kicked the wide-open door of a rusty air-car off its hinges and through his face with the watermelon-crack of a skull rupturing.

The last raised his hands to ward off the inevitable, closing his eyes as he prayed aloud, "Бурхад намайг хүлээн!"

"Na tonaht, pal!" A bound and she grabbed him by the nose, ramming two fingers into his nostrils with a force that seemed now gentle by all other comparisons. "Ah lahk you - ya've got tha clean'ist coverahl, Тиймээс та эрхэлсэн байх ёстой..."

[Sunset]

The North Shore, GEC-1042091C...

"One, two, three... Heave!"

The thin rope stretched tight over Timmons right shoulder, pressed hard into a thick pad of folded shirt and dense muscle that protested much despite its corded strength; Age had a way of doing that to a man. As the tallest and strongest, he was both the caller and the anchor with the others too all stretched out behind him, right down to Annya who held her own loop in her jaws as paws struggled against the flinching sand. Behind them the strong Imnsvali-made weave split into a pair of bands that wrapped around the exposed end of the half-buried cask. They'd managed to nearly unbury it before the tide had begun to come in again and with it the realization that if they opened it, they would possibly doom whatever was inside to a mildly salty fate.

'Not that some electrolytes wouldn't do me some good right now...' "Annya?" The Shepard was also in charge of moving the logs arranged to form rough rollers for the treasure - her idea - and she had dashed back to shove another just under the lip as soon as their last weary pull had finished. A bark, and it was... "Okay, one, two, three... Heave!"

He focused on the distant waves just visible on the other side of the island and pulled hard, losing himself in the effort as his wide feet dug into sand that was now wet with the edge of the occasional wave. Here where Deania had discovered her buried treasure the island narrowed to less than a hundred meters and without a tree to be seen. If there had been one he'd have rigged a pulley instead - half the effort, twice the length - but with no such gift they were forced to rely on strong backs and young backs. In a way it was relaxing. Man against nature, the work of one's own hands with the reward at the end the bumpy slide of the container up onto the logs and branches and then further up the sand as he strode forward, buoyed by inertia and adrenaline. As they continued forward free of the sand's compacted grasp all but Kedo abandoned him, the broad-chested Neko pulling his own weight as the others raced to either throw logs underneath or push from behind. The grass line was just a few meters away and a few more solid steps put his feet into the long strands and their prize just beyond it, safe from all but the highest tide and the fiercest storm.

It was time for a breather, and for a drink. It would have been far simpler to have his power armor relayed down from the Qasr, but that trip might be looking necessary as he hefted his canteen only to find it...

"What are you doing?!"

He looked over - the last drop falling onto his chest with an annoyed split - to where Deania was standing over Annya who was squatting over a canteen, the void of which was now being discretely filled by the dog who looked like she'd just emerged from the ocean.

"You biologicals look like you could use a drink, so I thought..."

"You thought we'd drink dog pee?!"

There was a round chorus of 'Eww!'s from the collective bunch but Annya kept up her flow and her explination, "...and since I don't need to pee, my bladder is a highly effective water filtration system. As fresh and pure as a mountain glacier stream."

She finished and held up the canteen, pads curling around the edge in a wholly unnatural fashion, "Well?"

Timmons shrugged; He'd had and done worse and as he wiped his lips he had to admit it was the best water he'd had outside of a starship's water purifiers and it wasn't even from the same source. That was enough to break the dam and one by one they lined up for a drink of AnnyaWater before breaking out whatever snacks they had or had not forgotten to bring along with some splitting between the two while he rose from the shade presented by the container to look at the straps and latches that held the container and thus their treasure shut. Some had been savagely bent and mangled by their passage over the rollers and sand - a few were already open - but strong fingers pried at them and the lone recalcitrant submitted to the blade of a Fleet-issue survival knife rammed through the softer metal.

"Gold, silver, jewels..." That last was intended as humor - he'd already seen the collection gathered by Deania and Alwyra, "What's our booty going to be?"

The rest pulled themselves to their feet and stepped back, some still standing in what would become the shade as he hauled the lid open with an appropriate flourish.

It was...

A computer of some kind - he recognized that much instantly. Each end of the hexagonal pod was occupied by a similarly shaped enclosure covered with recessed fans, grates, and access panels while the middle recessed into a trio of curved round displays with buttons and knobs arranged below them. There was a central interface that was likely a microphone or speaker, and above this what had probably been the unit's system switches. Set even further above this was a port for a cable of some kind and a circle of smaller connections below it. More interesting was the stalk mounted in a recess just in front of the interface, which he immediately connected to the faceted-square shape of the gems the two women had uncovered earlier.

"...It's not gold."

"...or silver."

"But it is treasure," he declared, swinging the lid shut before sand could get in and ruin what were hopefully undamaged circuits. "I'll bet that's a ship's computer core, ejected before it was destroyed. And I'll bet those," He pointed to one of the crystals Alwyra was holding up in example, "Are full of information. And information..."

"...is treasure!"

[Sunset]

SDF-Ares, Ares Planetary Orbit, Ares System, Coordinates...

"Commander, Incident Report you should see..."

"Incident Report? Another one?" Commander Vershin paused in his slow circuit of the stations and right behind the Lieutenant manning just one of the dozen-plus stations ringing the enormous holosphere that represented the entirety of Ares orbital space. That was his job, their job, and the job of the Ares; The Ascendant-Class Command Ship was posted in permanent orbit of the planet of its namesake with the duties of the expanded command staff given over entirely to monitoring and occasionally playing shiny-lights-on-the-tour host to visiting civilian dignitaries. That was, in fact, just about as far as their duties could possibly extend for reasons discussed in minor detail elsewhere, but it still put the Commander in intimate touch with the comings and goings of the planet and its commerce. "Not another bra factory..."

That had been the first Incident Report he'd payed particular attention to that day. Normally, despite the name, the Incident Reports would be compiled and presented to him at the end of his shift where he'd then make sure his replacement was aware of any significant incidents. For the most part they were insignificant; A ship had strayed more than the allowed amount out of its orbit and the orbits of other nearby ships altered and the crew interrogated as to the reason, teenagers out for a joyride causing something of the same, a particularly belligerent freighter captain wondering just why he couldn't set down directly on the roof of the factory. Insignificant, except for the explosion earlier that day in an orbital garment and lingerie factory. The McGrader-Dougal automaton - apparently zero-g was best for making the lightest, flimsiest underwear - had lost all of its station-keeping thrusters in one unfortunate chain of events and plunged into the atmosphere before breaking up, burning up, and raining lacy underthings all over the northern hemisphere.

"No, sir... Not another one. At twenty-three sixteen;" Vershin checked the chronograph on the wall - less than two minutes ago. Just as he'd been stepping up behind the Lieutenant, which was very odd; "An object was picked up by TRIPWIRE. It exited FTL at," he read off the coordinates, "And was identified as a inter-system cruise missile."

"A sensor glitch?"

After all, the day before had seen a massive thirty-six hour simulated attack on the Republic and every other Triumvirate state. The results had been predictably messy; They'd held out for a while but there were too many vectors to cover and eventually the limited attacks had risen to a general flood that had swamped all defenses and resulted in the simulated deaths of pretty much everyone, himself included.

"No sir - redundancies ran it through, checked with Fleet and Central, and the incoming was confirmed. It was swatted by Ares PD at twenty-three sixteen point one."

Which meant that the Command Ship herself had taken out the incoming missile with its point defense - he hadn't noticed, "Admirable response time. Since we're not all up in arms again, who's chucking missiles at us one by one?"

"That's why the system thought I - you - should take a look at it," the Lieutenant answered, a few touches at his console generating a floating hologram above it. It showed the missile in its glory, a metal bird arcing through the heavens as it sought the planet beyond in vain attempt. It was recognizably not one of the missiles from the previous day; Those had been ZMI-manufactured intersystem planet killers. The Industrialists were not a foe, but they were one of the few national-level players with that kind of threat projection. Of course those missiles had been a computer simulation... "It's an antique. Nuclear warhead;" Which was still more than enough to do some damage, especially if it had hit a civilian area; "And there's something painted on the side."

"Huh..."

The missile continued its solitary flight in slow motion, the slow spiral gradually turning the cylinder until whatever was on the side was visible to whatever camera had caught the intruder before it was destroyed, SORRY FRIENDS.

"In red letters too - and hand-painted. So who lobbed it at us?"

"Someone who shouldn't be, and who shouldn't be able to. TRIPWIRE backtracked the FTL trace to Kytalan, which is;" Another hologram, this time of a pleasant looking brown-blue-green world distinctly lacking in the sprawling cities and orbital infrastructure that would have otherwise defined the origins of such a weapon. The image was real though; Real clouds moved past, real trees dotted the highlands, and if one zoomed in close enough they could see tiny ships crossing the waves. All of which meant that the image was coming from a reconnaissance-slash-communications-slash-monitoring satellite in orbit. One of his satellites, as it were. "Not capable of launching cruise missiles at anyone. At least they weren't."

The image suddenly spun backwards, the events of the past few hours revolving themselves until a brilliant spark could just be seen crossing the distant curve of the planet as it rose above the horizon and headed into orbit. A few minutes later and the burn turned into a spark as the weapon disappeared.

"Huh... How?"

"No idea. Intelligence is trying to identify the weapon and manufacturer now. But by all indications, the Kytalan," he wasn't sure if he had that right, but he went with it anyway, "Are not capable of space travel nor the manufacture of nuclear weapons."

"Well then - forward the Incident Report on to Fleet;" The Lieutenant nodded - he'd already done so, "And keep an eye out for more. I suspect they'll be getting a visit from someone with some questions to ask..."

[Kytalan]

Offices of the Chancellor, Konalymuasū, Kāvusin Province, Kytalan, Çannas, somewhere out in space, earlier...

A solitary scientist pulled out rolled-up papers from a sack and laid them across the chancellor's desk. His wiry gray fur stood on end as he fretted over the gravity of the presentation. The chancellor sat calmly behind the desk with a cup of tea at his side. "The expedition recovered something quite significant, that might change the destiny of our entire Federation." He rolled out a detailed drawing of the discovery and excitedly continued. "It is a weapon like nothing we have seen before. When activated, it releases a tremendous burst of heat, leveling an area the size of an entire city. If we could replicate-"

The chancellor raised his hand and the scientist fell silent. "And what is this weapon called, doctor?"

"Its creators called it a nūklijamisal - the archeologists have translated it as tangogisögas. We have found only a few, but we would need to replicate the technolo-"

"First we must conduct a live test of the devices we already have. What target would be suitable?"

"There is a relevant matter, chancellor - a blessing and a curse. The system by which this particular tangogisögas is propelled appears to be designed for delivery across great distances of void. We will need some form of coordinates suitable for an interstellar journey. I do have an idea."

The scientist pulled a book from his bag - Māksen Köma's Notes from a Journey to the Stars. He flipped to a bookmark stuck somewhere in the appendices and stabbed his finger at a complicated set of numbers. "We have this set of spatial coordinates - Māksen clearly felt that they were quite significant to mention them. Māksen wouldn't lie - she's too important an official-"

"And a madwoman!" The chancellor pounded his desk. "I would think a man as educated as you in the natural sciences would recognize the patent foolishness of this... life on other worlds and ships to the stars and such. She's a police commissioner, not a scientist." He took a sip of tea. "You're suggesting we take the word of a work of fiction for an event as important as this?"

The scientist looked terrified and his nervous shaking was amplified. "Chancellor, I do not know what these coordinates refer to or how Māksen found them, but they must be significant." He fumbled with the many rolls of paper until he found one in particular and unrolled it again, revealing a great deal of complex math surrounding a circular planet and several orbit trajectories. "We have already calculated the trajectories needed for the initial launch, converted the coordinates." He began hopping up and down like a child awaiting a present. "I promise, sir. We will not disappoint you."

---

The chancellor stood upon a great hill. On the plain below, a host of soldiers, machines, and beasts of burden hauled the colossal tangogisögas into its cradle. It had, the science team had promised, its own source of power, which they could not yet understand. All that was required of them was to give it the trajectory to escape their world.

The scientist appeared behind the chancellor, catching him by surprise. "The device is nearly ready, sir. I will seek your final word before its launch."

Both men's attention was diverted by the sight of a disheveled old woman in a police commissioner's uniform running toward the device with a jar of paint and a brush in her hands. She shoved past the retinue of soldiers and began painting strange red characters on its surface.

"Is that Commissioner Māksen?"

"Indeed, sir. I believe it is."

They heard her anguished cries as the soldiers tried to drag her away from the machine, unable to interrupt her mad writing. "Stop! Stop! You're aiming your missile at my friends! You don't know what you're doing!"

The soldiers managed to dislodge her from the missile and restrain her - an ironic fate for one in her office. The chancellor sighed and said to the scientist, "Maybe she was being honest. Still insane, though." He squinted to read the letters, but could not recognize them.

---

With the commissioner far removed from the launch site, the chancellor gave the order to fire. Great engines roared as the tangogisögas climbed through the skies of their world. The chancellor began to cheer, followed by a throng of assembled military officers and scientists, until their device disappeared from view. They were putting their trust in the equations of the researchers and the design of whoever had left it for them to find, unsure whether it would reach its destination.

A hundred kilometers up, the solitary tangogisögas continued to race away from the planet, slowly orienting itself toward its destination, bearing its ten-megaton warhead and, in red paint, "SORRY FRIENDS".

Posted with (presumed) permission of Sunset

[Sunset]

SDF-Hygieas, Underway to Çannas...

Captain KaNeeDa tugged at her collar (It sounded silly, every time. It didn't matter how often they said it - she still felt like she should be wearing latex in a Maple Leaf motif. Never mind how the ArAreBeen knew who or what Captain Canada or in fact Canada was (Her parents had been there, 1986. Look it up.).) in a rare moment of nervous anxiety. Like most of her species, she was normally light-hearted and in fact could be called air-headed but this was different. This was the place that had signaled the shift in her career. On her return to the Fleet, she'd shifted her focus from Communications to Command and had pushed through from Lieutenant to Commander to now Captain based on a certain je ne sais quoi. It didn't hurt that the Fleet was undergoing a major expansion and new senior command crew were in high demand. Her experience in Kytalan and being one of the very few to know the native languages personally (as opposed to electronic translation) made her and her ship the natural choice to pay the planet a visit and see why the fudge they were shooting at them.

"And how, and who, and why red?"

At least they were sorry. In fact, the text written on the side of the missile had sent the Intelligence types into a quizzy. Why apologize for trying to blow someone up? Had the launch been accidental, the text on the side been added when they'd realized their mistake? Was it sarcasm? That last bit - just any number of partial theories and notes and suggestions that appeared in the mission dossier - had been discarded immediately by the ArAreBeen. She knew the tongue, she knew the writing, and there were specific forms that would have indicated sarcasm. Something like attaching a ':P' to the end of a short text message.

"An interstellar text message? Why not just call?"

She didn't have any idea that Ambassador Prear - now busy way, way away on the other side of the galaxy - had left behind a small stack of Consulate Cards that could have been used to contact someone in the Diplomatic section. She did know that the cards tended to last about as long as they were intended; Tucked into a pocket to be destroyed in the laundry, tossed into a drawer never to see the light of day again, traded around to collectors before eventually being stolen and sold to a guy named Delvin, or simply thrown away in favor of more traditional methods. If she had cared there was a blurb about who had received the cards in the Ambassador's notes that were also included in the dossier, but being Captain was a busy thing and she'd only hit the front page before moving on and hoping one of her subordinates might read it further and point out some useful detail over dinner.

No such luck.

"And so we come a calling," she finished, looking up to the main screen while absently scribbling her name on some unimportant piece of paperwork. That was the first secret she'd discovered; All that paperwork? If it didn't have a color at the top, she just signed it and moved on. Someone somewhere had already done the legwork and she was just being asked to sign off on it so they didn't get in trouble. Since this was her ship, her crew, she would always be in trouble even if she hadn't signed it. So she just signed them and only read the ones with the colors at the top, "Thank you, Ensign."

The Ensign, who'd just managed to have his lover transferred aboard, nodded and turned away with his face as flat and impassive as possible.

Another few hours and they would arrive and she would beam down - God, she loved a good hard beaming - to figure out who had shot at them as well as why. And possibly when. What would be useful as well, since the Intelligence geeks still hadn't pinned that one down either. Who, what, why, where, when, and how... The how would come as well, and the where. All good questions, all good answers. Especially when Captain KaNeeDa was doing the asking! There was something tickling at the back of her head though, somewhere just behind those enormous purple eyes. Which was really more towards the middle of her head rather than the back where her hair was (She was wearing it long with a braid across the front from left to right that gave her gray forehead the odd look as if a wave of purple was about to crash over it) but there it was. Something about that red writing was familiar, though where she'd seen it...

[Sunset]

GEC-786453Ac (Bestek), Alpha/Gamma Border Region...

"What Ah love 'bout this," Meli added, her tone as casual as the way she held the man dangling by his ankle, "Is just how little you know."

Her muscles were barely even tense - the Dwarf could tear through a bulkhead if she had to, and the seventy-some odd kilos of port master were something to sneeze at - and she sat with the other hand behind her head and her feet locked around something just for the sake of balance. She wasn't exactly going to say what that something was and that was part of the game, as was the hood she'd tied firmly around the man's neck so that he couldn't see, couldn't even feel the wind moving him slowly back and forth. All he knew was that he was an unknown distance from the ground and being held there at the whim of a psychotic murderess who'd just killed four men in less than the time it took him to flick his cigarette lit.

"Ah could be up in ah tree. Jus' a few feet above tha ground. Right? Oh, it would be ah nasty bump but ye'd probably live unless ya snapped yer neck. Or ya might end up paralyized ah'n spend the rest 'o yer days shittin' into a bahg."

Just a little movement from her thick wrist and he swung back and forth, his screams and cries of mercy unintelligible to anyone who didn't speak Mongolian, which was apparently the dominant language in the area.

"Or Ah could be aht the top o' the communications towar in the middle o' town. Ah'n everyone could be watchin' ya shit yerself while ya' cry lahk a baby girl. If'ya fall... Ker-Splat! Bits 'ahn pieces o' you all oher the place. Yer head would split lahk a melon, brains ah'l over the place. Pavement? Could be pavement. Guess ye'll know when ya' hit. Ah mean granted, if'n you were up in the comms toher you'd be wakin' up the whole town. Some 'o them mah't even have the ahdea o' takin' a shot at me to save yer lahf. If anyone lahk's you, that is. Anyone still ah'live, that is. But Ah'm pretty fast. Ah bet Ah could swing you," And she did, suddenly jerking him to the side as if to block a possibly imaginary shot with his body, "Ah'n yer dead. Kill'd bah yer own kin. Ah'n if they do hit me..."

She dropped him, but before he could finish opening his mouth to scream her vise-like grip had closed over his heel with enough force to turn alarm into pain, "Down ya' go, head'or'heels to land on somethin' pointy. Now tha' would be fun - Ah've never tossed some'in off a buildin' before ah'n impaled them on somethin'. You could be mah first!"

"Та юу хүсэж байна вэ?!"

"Tha's a very good question. Wha' do Ah want... Some good head. But not from you. What Ah wan' from you is every bit you know about the smugglin' yer doin'. Ah figure it's gotta be you. Yer people come ahn go as soon as they cah'n get off this shithole, rah't? But the smugglin's been goin' on fer years. Whell, not rah'lly smugglin'. But someone's been shippin' some bad things to sah'm worse people ah'n Ah figure to find out who's next. Ah'n iffn' you tell me," she waved him back and forth meaningfully.

There was no immediate response - no confession of guilt - which already had its own meaning. He was more afraid of whoever he was working for than he was of her. Or he held out the possibility of rescue. Since the second was now spread around into a good four-score and twenty bloody chunks of various sizes and arrangements she assigned him the first before continuing, "Or Ah could be danglin' you over one 'o those MT-97 ahnti-tank mines you had buried out bahk. Nasty piece of work those. Kill ah lot o' people. Kill you pretty good too - rip ya' to shreds ah'n you'd be just ahlive long enough to watch yer own bits lah'n somewhere ah'n make ah pretty splash. So... Sance Ah already know yer smugglin' weapons, wha don'cha tell me the rest? Then we can both go home, rah't?"

"Би... Би тэднийг хэн мэдэхгүй байна! Би код хүлээх! Тэд надад кодыг хэлэх үед би тэдний буух тоног төхөөрөмж шалгах хэрэгтэй! багц байдаг, би багцыг авч, би үүнийг өнгөрөх..."

The dead man, or one of them. Of course he would pass it to the man she'd already killed, who then passed it to the man in the village who was strung up by his own belt in his closet on his tiptoes and a whole spread of the girlie magazines he liked around him - she was proud of that one. The next link in the chain might still be coming down from where they'd been thrown into the high atmosphere by the meteorite strike, and then whatever nastiness would once again be moved off-world until it ended up in the hands of some disenfranchised young idiot in a major city who would use it to kill either themselves or however many innocents. The longer the chain, the harder it was to track down where it all came from but, "What's the code? How do you know which ship it's on?"

"Тэд Петр асуух!"

Peter, "Peter? Ah'n ah'd guess you tell them Peter's ah't home sick or somethin' and you go check the landin' gear yourself." Which meant her next step was a little bit of impersonation and, given how infrequent the traffic was, it might take a while, "Ah'll right, details! Give me the whole sequence, pahn't by pahn't..."

----

"Did he tell you what you wanted to know?" ScLappi asked, slipping into the coverall that would act as his portion of the disguise. It wasn't a good fit, but rolling it up to what had been the original owner's elbows put it just at his wrists. "I presume so. Then what happened?"

"Ah let him go..."

"Humor..." But the response died on his lips as there was the sudden, sharp crack of an explosion from one of the houses near the port building. The whole structure bulged out and then collapsed, bits of shrapnel pinging off the nearby wrecks or cutting small ticks out of the already-dingy paint of the port building; "Aww - he moved!"

[Sunset]

SS-Qasr, GEC-1042091C Orbit, Gamma Quadrant...

"I'll do what I can," the engineer looked at the module skeptically, "But no promises. I'm more the maintenance and comfort type of engineer. Powering up an alien computer core? That's something for the Exploration Command, or Fleet, or..."

"A major research university!" Alwyra cried, taking the attention of everyone in the room as she stood with a finger held high and excitement in her pose. "Which I just happen to have given a lot of money to!"

So that she could be rid of a lazy step-daughter, yes, but still the money had been spent and there were favors owed. Not even favors; The chance to dig into the core and whatever information was held on the octahedral crystals would be a plum prize for any history or computer science department. Or both.

"Give them a call, see if they can walk you through it. But we're going back down there - we've still got an immoral fish to find."

Not that they had been searching. The ancient core presented opportunity and everyone with a say in the matter had insisted that they comb the beach, the shallows, and even a couple expeditions into deeper water for other components or more of the crystal containers. These they had found in spades either buried in the sand or lodged under some sheltering rock. Even a few sparkles on the sea floor had returned single crystals and the occasional sharp flash in the surf and sun hinted that there had once been many more. In keeping with the pirate theme these had been packed up and stored in a chest that now sat in the Qasr's dining hall where the occasional hand would run through the horde or pluck up a crystal to examine it in the reflected light from the planet below in search of a hint at the contents.

"Immoral?"

"Yeah... Fuck that fish. I'm gonna eat the first one I find!"

[Sunset]

Special Projects Covert Research Facility 74-A (Sigma), Denali, The Yukon System...

"They're ants."

"Duh," Kraus rolled his eyes so hard one could almost hear the strange blue orbs clink together inside their sockets, "Of course they're ants. Ants are one of the best model species for this; They are reasonably simple but have good specialization with workers, protectors and controllers, can survive most any environment, and scale up or down depending on what you need them to do. And these aren't just ants," he held up his arms, striking a muscular pose, "They're Super-Ants!"

"Super-Ants."

Fredrick looked at Francine, still stuck in his curled over pose, and she looked back with nothing more than boredom in her steel-blue eyes. For his clone - or her clone - the two didn't exactly see eye to eye. Or even have the same eyes. His shoulders fell into a slump and he straightened up to pull out the sleeves of his lab coat, "Yeah... Super-Ants."

"Why are they super and what are they doing?"

"What else would ants do?" He stepped up to the edge of the terrarium and looked down at the intricately sculpted town spread out before them. It wasn't an ant town - it was a carefully made reproduction of a city of Republic origin complete with little hovercars on fine crystal-clear toothpicks. The ants didn't particular care where it was so they had already half-demolished it in search of building materials, "Build a colony. They are super because they are cybernetic self-replicating ants. Not nanites - too big for that - but they can build more of themselves. Ideally, when I figure out how, they'll make more of themselves out of PTU-557. So white ants. Very stylish."

"And so... We're going to have a particularly hard-to-remove ant infestation?"

"No..." Kraus sighed and rolled a hand, producing a hologram of a star system that he enlarged with the other and then zoomed in on, selecting a particular world that looked just about as uninhabitable as they come. "This world will. And others. See, I like the idea of the OmniFormer, but its slow. Years, decades. These little guys work fast. Or they will, when I make some the size of a car. As long as they don't..."

"Don't what?"

The Doctor shuffled a toe, "Well... In order to make them really super, I kinda had to give them a bit of a performance boost in the ol' brains department. They've got a lot of computronium in their II Core;" That was the part of the Expert system that gave it the ability and flexibility to truly learn and innovate. Which meant; "So they might just be hitting sentience at a pretty high rate. Kinda defeats the purpose of their Eien node, so I only put one of those in the Queens."

"And the idea of a bunch of hardened, self-replicating, proto-sapient, potentially immortal colony-builders set loose in the galaxy didn't trigger any warning for you?"

"Well, when you say it like that, it just sounds even better..."

[Sunset]

A Classroom, Somewhere in the Republic of Sunset, 2173...

"...fiat, from the Latin 'let it become.' Now, nearly all modern currencies are of the fiat type. Previously both real and backed were somewhat common by the use of either essentially died off with the industrial age and the subsequent increase in productivity and the accompanying ease of access to resources. That has only increased in the intervening years to where the precious metals typically used either as currency or to back some representation of it became even easier to harvest. Gold and silver can be found in mass or even created using energy to matter conversion."

"Now, some civilizations have attempted to replace the precious metals with something else - a person-hour, work-unit, energy credit, or the like. But all of these fall apart in a near-post-scarcity or-slash-and post-automation economy. In those where the concept seems to work, there is typically an undercurrent of authoritarian control or the direct understanding of it and the system falls apart when the leadership does. In others there is the suggestion of a representative backing but this too is ultimately a fiat currency as the government then regulates the value of that backing relative to other economies instead of allowing it to float at actual market value."

"What does fiat ultimately mean? In the end it means fake - my money has value because I say it does. I could just as well say that everyone has blue hair regardless of the actual anti-spectrum reflection of your hair. Is this a bad thing? No - it is simply unavoidable. Modern civilization needs a convenient and seamless way to pass a representation of resources from one individual or entity to another. It's still fake though, so what's the difference between your fake money and my fake money? My fake money is backed up by a government that can send people with guns to stop you from making your fake money. Guns that they paid for with their fake money, and people they paid to stop you from making your fake money with their own fake money. It's all about who believes in who's fake money more..."

[Sunset]

Dr. Ambrose's Laboratory, Steven's Crater, The Moon Minamoto, Hachiman, Ares System...

"Fools!" Stephen laughed, throwing back his head and his voice high and cackling. His thin bones practically rattled in their sockets as his mirth continued, echoing through the cavernous tiled space and among the equipment scattered here and there, "Yes, fools! They look for the threat rather than the promise! But," he heaved himself forward, clutching the railing and staring at the tiny blue creatures as they swam and swarmed, "Brilliant. Yes - madly brilliant," he rasped before laughing again.

"You see, Miss Nineteen, when it was revealed to me that the Krȃng had managed to somehow imbue their own genetics with the ability to store an entire operating system - no insignificant feat of programming - and not only store it but allow them to transfer it into the memory banks of one of their many drones, I had a startling realization. If they could contain that complexity, then what else might be hidden away? As well, their species was able to somehow consume the neuro-tissue of their parasitic hosts and gain not only physical sustenance from it but also the powers of the mind! In evocation of the cannibalistic rituals of old Earth, the Krȃng actually became more intelligent by eating the brains of their victims! But how?"

"I'm sure you figured it out," Nineteen coo'ed, her voice as low and sultry as he'd crafted it ever so carefully to be.

"You're damned right I did. You see, every brain - clump of nervous tissue, spinal column, advanced ganglia, or what have you - is different. No particular species except for those descended or engineered from another is exactly the same. It is a rare trick where two sapient species can even reproduce and sometimes the results are horrible and will gain you nothing but a few seasons of a reality show on TLC. Or E! Something something Kardashians. Anyway - the Krȃng either evolved with or self-evolved the ability to process different neurological tissue. One of the core elements to this process is the ability for their body to recognize which particular species is which - one never knows which particular urethra one will swim up! - and this is accomplished by the storage of the host's genetic information in their own."

"Which means..."

"Exactly!" He turned from her, finger in the air as he began to pace around the tank. "They have the genetic information of many different species embedded in their own. Now, the trick is to figure out not only what is what - no small task considering the enormous amounts of data involved - but figuring out what each species is and how it might be useful to us based on nothing more than their most basic molecule. Especially as we haven't seen most of these species before. I say most," he grinned madly, "Because most is not all. You see, the particular batch that decided to attempt to infect all of the various artificial wombs scattered through the Republic - including the one that led to this swarm of blue sperm - had already eaten well of the species we know as Otterkin but that call themselves correctly... Well, I forget. Anyway, that's not important. What is is that I found their genetic code in that of the Krȃng and then found a pattern of nucleotide in front of it that repeated throughout. A marker that indicated the next sequence would be outside genetic information."

"Interesting that they translated it into their own code."

"Very! And very astute of you, Miss Nineteen. Yes, though I am not yet sure as to the reason why. But what I do know is that there is the equivalent of multiple terabytes of information in there. Dozens, if not hundreds of different unknown species. A dozen of which," he swept his arm out and across the bank of tanks that stood across the far wall, "Will be joining us again very soon! And then, Miss Nineteen, we will see..." He laughed again, each cackle adding a growing note of madness, "We shall see what they are made of..."

[Sunset]

Special Projects Research Tower, Landor City, Terra Incognito...

"...it certainly looks like magic - Majikku, since we seem to love using Japanese for every new bit of techno-magic we come up," Katryna pulled her hands back into a cage-shape at her stomach, a ball of lightning forming inside before she thrust them out again and sent the bolt arcing across the room to explode against the target metal plate in a sear of white light. "But it's not."

Another bolt of miniature lightning and she held up her hands, flesh-covered panels opening at a thought to reveal metal and circuitry that looked suspiciously like mystic runes and more familiarly like the Dulyani characters scribed on the inside of their Boundary-locking Artifact. Rolling the digits around, she did her best impersonation of a mystic magician before again closing the panels and holding up her arm, a shield forming out of thin air to provide cover against some invisible attacker.

"Sure does look like though. What it is is a local manipulation of the boundary conditions in a much more precise but ultimately temporary way. These," she wiggled her fingers again, just beyond the scalloped edge of the shield, "Are an interpreter between the machine-level code of the Boundary and the Matrix and whatever I want to do with it. A shield, a lightning bolt, whatever - but ultimately temporary. Unlike the Eien or Dulyani gateway, which provide something of a powerful anchor point into a sub-section of our universe, these directly manipulate the local substance and - call it paradox, call it magical backlash - the universe doesn't like it. Or rather, it has so much more energy in its system that it quickly encroaches on and re-orders whatever boundary changes I make. That isn't to say that I can't make permanent changes though..."

Once again she moved her hands, using one to hold up the shield while the second moved back and forth over the reflective surface while some object materialized out of thin air. A colorful toy truck was revealed and she tossed it to Doctor Thola, who turned it over in his own furry mitts, "Seems flimsy."

"Hollow plastic - but energy to matter conversion isn't that efficient of a process. This shield, on the other hand, is mostly light that delineates in useful fashion where other matter and energy is not allowed to pass. So it's all in how you word things. The toy will remain because the matter it is made of conforms exactly to the rules of our universe. A little bit of change and it would fall apart or..." She reached behind her back, pulled out a cartoonishly-large black bomb with a lit fuse and threw it towards him where it exploded in mid-air, "There you go."

"Can I do this?"

"Not yet - I've got a couple teams working on a wetware implementation, but the implementation will be better for anyone with a cybernetic extension, regardless of their success. In the end it's all about how much energy one can put into the local Boundary. That affects everything from size to effectiveness to duration. If I want to keep pumping energy in, I can keep it going until I run out. But as soon as I stop, the greater boundary conditions start to seep back in. And the greater the changes;" The shield disappeared without a flash or a pop, "The faster they are reverted."

"But this seems useful, does it not," the Mecce bobbed his head. "Unless one is very experienced with the technology, or even the notion of the technology, it will be very hard to uncover its presence. Or that it was even there."

"Exactly," she agreed, motioning to a cabinet to one side of the workspace. "The notion of using this technology for Intelligence activities has already been suggested, but the problem of the user has been raised as well. Cybernetic individuals already tend to get a lot of scrutiny, especially in the kind of places where blasting people with magic might be really useful. Hopefully the teams working on the bioware version will be able to pull off a good ol' fashioned miracle, but it's just like the wizards of myth and legend - the more powerful the magic, the more powerful the mage, and the more potentially disastrous the consequences..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Springbok, Interstellar Space, Near the Memuru Nebula, Alpha Quadrant...

"...drive off-line, power systems at standby, all systems now read yellow," the Lieutenant at the secondary console reeled off, going down the same list and watching the same data flows she'd studied carefully a dozen times before, "Test complete."

Commander Brown sat back at his own station with a sigh, eyes closed as he steadily ignored the same data flows, "Too bad she's not. What a train wreck..."

According to the experiment logs, there were now pieces of NX143 scattered all along the chosen test course. The spindle had wobbled - it had always wobbled - but this time had been especially bad with the rapid shear from the quantum frame-shift envelope literally cutting pieces off the swept-back stabilizers until they were ragged nubs. Worse, the flight path had shown up on TRIPWIRE like a bantha at an ewok picnic which meant that it likely showed up on any similar monitoring system within a hundred light years. That meant that every adjustment, every tinker they had made had been the exact opposite of useful.

"At least we can go back to the last group of settings... Pack everything up," he ordered, another sigh punctuating. They couldn't stay - there was a risk at the drive would initiate another emergency shutdown and fling the experimental platform half-way across the sector. With the potential for watchers that would leave NX143 stranded and alone against an unknown force looking to plunder her secrets. Instead they'd move to another area and the TRIPWIRE monitoring center would keep an especially close eye out for any 'random' traffic sniffing too close to the test area.

Always a silver lining, even if the sparkle was from the scattered bits and pieces cast off of the battered NX143...

[Sunset]

Port Ha'Bainda, Blishi'i (GEC-1342224) Star System, Canis Major II Dwarf Galaxy...

"How about one of those?" Kami pointed out the viewing window to where an enormous ship with tri-lateral symmetry was docked. Robotic work crews and extended mechanical arms were scurrying over the surface of the still partially skeletal vessel finishing up this detail or that as they sought to prepare it for launch and - possibly more importantly - to free up the bay for the next ship. It was already visible; A great slab of boxy gray that took up the entirety of the port's main construction module. "We could mount it below the secondary hull..."

Fellow Notaro looked at her then back to the ship and both cocked their heads slightly to the left or right as they visualized the Ojeni mounted atop the larger and unnamed vessel; "An Arbiter of Reality? Whatever for?"

"You never know when you'll need something until you need it..."

Notaro turned back to her and then both laughed, though he did follow that with an honestly statement, "Value of your trade not withstanding, a siege gun is well outside of your credit."

Their trade - her's as well as that of the rest of the crew of the Ojeni - certainly had been valuable however, and there was more to come. The Blishi'i United Federation had exactly what the explorers were looking for in the form of knowledge and information about the scattered stars of the Dwarf Galaxy and they were willing to trade in kind. That trade would only accelerate as she had just finished wrapping up negotiations with the Blishi'i Industrial Council - a trade organization organized something along the lines of the merchant guilds of old - that would allow them to place an (extremely) long-range communications relay satellite in orbit around one of the various moons in the outer system. Both for quasi-religious and economic reasons the Council and their advisory Paladins had been very cautious about establishing direct contact between the Republic and thus the rest of the internet-connected Milky Way while she had to carefully negotiate what kind of oversight access the Inquisition would have - the Blishi'i version was more regulated than the free-wheeling internet of Human-descended space. With the final elements of that agreement established she'd taken some time off for some.casual tourism and window shopping, the Fellow offering to show her the sights.

"Though I doubt the Admiralty would approve such a transaction, especially only a few days into a relationship. Although..."

He turned and looked away, out the window again as the construction continued. Port Ha'Bainda was an enormous vertical crescent that served as trade port, construction yard, military station, and as either the model for or based on a large number of near-identical stations found in both Blishi'i orbit and around the great number of inhabited planets and moons that dotted the star system. This was the United Federation's core and the signs of civilization were everywhere. Even from where they stood, she could see another station, a slow circle of transports and shuttles moving between it and the surface, a hundred small satellites of various kinds, and ships ranging from the behemoth to the evasive. Trade ships were everywhere and their variety enforced the status of the Federation as a multi-species culture with the Fellow next to her being one of many rather than the primary.

"Although?"

"Your ship will undoubtedly be leaving soon, though I would not question when her captain chooses to depart. We too have exploration vessels and while they are..."

"Held on a tighter leash?" She smiled. "Something they do with pets;" Kami didn't have one, not even a cat, "And starship captains, on occasion. But you were about to ask me something?"

"Yes," and he reached inside the ever-present black robes to withdraw a data tablet from some pocket or pouch. Keeping it clasped under his palm, he looked around in a manner that was almost furtive but as they could have been easily observed or indeed followed by a dozen of the hundreds of people scattered through the wide observation bay and its adjoining corridors the effort seemed futile. That if anything Notaru himself was her assigned minder made her in turn suspicious and she too looked around, half-expecting to be suddenly descended on by red-robed Inquisitors, "Take this. Paladin Postribr;" His commanding officer and who's ship still lay docked next to her own, "Asked me to give it to you."

As casually as she could, she turned her own palm to receive it, the tablet far larger on her small hand than his enormous three-fingered paw, and she slipped it into a pocket to rattle against the collection of credit chips and knick-knacks she'd picked up, "What is it? Should I make sure I'm not caught with it?"

Another laugh. For a man of quasi-faith, the Fellow was of a particularly jovial nature though perhaps that in itself should have been more suspicious, "No, no. But it should be guarded. You see, the Paladin has a favor to ask of you and thus I will ask it for him out of respect. You will leave and once again set off to explore our portion of the universe... Just as his brother did many years ago. I do not speak of a brother in arms, though they were that as well, but his true sibling and one that he loved from shared birth. While it fell to Postribr to defend the Federation, his brother sought the same course you did and went out to expand our knowledge of it."

"His ship disappeared, didn't it?"

It was a common enough occurrence and one of the risks - and one drummed into the head of every officer and crew member throughout the Exploration Command. Space flight in the Republic and through much of space might be as safe as taking the car to Grandma's on a local level but in the vastness of infinity and beyond there were many dangers to both ship and crew; "It did. He does not ask you to look for it - that would be too much. But your ship will roam far and wide if half of your stories are true and without that leash you may have greater chance to stumble across some word or tale of his lost sibling. The tablet contains what records he can give you."

"We'll keep our eyes open," Captain Blaine promised, standing a little taller and looked out to her own ship. "That is a favor I would not hesitate to give, even to an enemy."

"Good! Now... It may interest you to know that we have already received some offers of trade from your merchants," he withdrew another tablet, this time turning it over to show several projected images half-dancing in the air above the surface. "And I would hope ours have responded in kind. But I do have questions - and yes, this is official business. Can you tell me about this company calling itself AMI..."

"ZMI? Zeppelin Manufacturers? They make a lot more than airships, and they spread advertising around like a plague of locusts, but they are overall..."

"No," he corrected, and touched the controls to alter the images. The next one was of a male human approximately sixty years of age with a halo of white hair and a similarly colored goatee and mustache, "AMI. And this... Stephen Ambrose. They are offering a line of military equipment, some of which seems uncomfortably familiar..."

[Sunset]

GEC-786453Ac (Bestek), Alpha/Gamma Border Region...

"Affirmative, Kirby Delauter - you are cleared for landing on pad..." Meli turned and looked out the window. Not only was it the quickest way to check which one of the three pads was clear but it was also the only way. In fact such were the state of the traffic control systems on Bestek that she might have just authorized a Solar-Class Megafreighter to put down on a circle of concrete the size of one of its manuvering thrusters, "Two."

The pause also made it seem as though there was some traffic through the backwater, but really she was more making sure some kids from the nearby town hadn't decided to use the landing pad as a soccer pitch again (Somewhere, a British person died...). The other two were occupied by tenants she hadn't bothered to eject because that would be work and she wasn't a worker though she could have easily pushed both ailing craft off to the side by her lonesome. Since there were none, and she wasn't going to, and she was reasonably confident that someone who owned or operated a Solar-Class Megafreighter would be careful enough to check just what they were landing on, she kicked back her feet and laced her fingers behind her head ready for another nap.

"Is Peter there?"

She nearly toppled backwards out of the chair. A working vacation was one thing, but when the extent to which the 'backwater' label applied was made boringly clear, she'd said her prayers every night that someone would come in shortly with the start of the sequence that would indicate that another package was coming in. Rolling forward, she nearly slapped the button to reply but her hand was blocked both suddenly and unexpectedly by that of her lover and now apparent traitor ScLappi, "...what'er you..."

"...it occurs to me," he interrupted, "That replying yourself might not be the best idea. Presuming the person on the other end has been trained to some level in clandestine activities, they may be looking for not only a particular response but that of a particular person. You are not that person."

Unfortunately the person who would have answered was, as Meli herself had suggested as to the countersign, quite sick and could not come to answer even if she wanted to - a terminal case of metal poisoning had claimed him nearly two weeks ago when he'd unwittingly rolled off the pressure trigger of an MT-97 anti-tank mine.

"If you were to answer, and you were not the person supposed to answer, it would be easy for them to either destroy the port or not complete their portion of the sequence. Since we cannot reasonably outrun orbital fire..."

"...I shouldna answer correctly. Mahks sense. We ahlready know they 'ave ah package ahn where to find it."

"Which may serve the dual purpose of leaving them altogether unaware of your interest in both the package itself and the individuals connected to it," he agreed. "Maintaining some element of subterfuge."

"Is Peter there?" The speaker repeated, the tinny buzz accompanying it fading away after a second. He withdrew his hand and she pressed the button, "Peter? He's tahkin' a shit."

"...well put."

She shrugged, "First thing Ah could think of. Speakin' oh which..."

By the time the duce had dropped, the incoming ship had landed as well and with the commode sputtering its last behind her she meandered out to the office to greet the new arrival, who turned out to be pretty much the most boring looking fellow ever. Pale and with the kind of spindly arms and legs they made toothpicks out of, he was wearing some kind of self-contained breathing unit and looked like he was about ready to collapse under his own weight, "Is Peter here?"

"Ah, nope," she looked past him. There wasn't anyone else in the office or lurking outside so this had to be the same one who had asked earlier. A lightbulb went off in her head and she followed with, "Went home sick. You need fueled up or anything? Ah kin get that done ahn you kin go to his place. Jus' right down the street thar," she pointed to the long line of junked air cars and spacecraft with her own now camouflaged among them with the addition of some moss. He turned and she continued to look past him, "Just raht down there."

"I..." He looked back at her, "You're new here, aren't you?"

"Just a couple weeks."

"Yes. No, I'll let him rest. I will need fuel and the services of a loader for my cargo..."

[Sunset]

Blishi'i Fellow of the Blishi'i United Federation

The Blishi'i United Federation is one of the larger civilizations inhabiting the Canis Major II Dwarf Galaxy that slowly circles our own Milky Way Galaxy and the Blishi'i, as the name suggests, were the founding species (Inhabiting, of course, the planet Blishi'i in the Blishi'i Star System). They are a bipedal species with plentiful traces of their aquatic origins; Slick scales cover their body and their three-fingered hands and two-toed feet are wide and flat and still give them exceptional speed and agility in the water. Filter feeders, they have no mouth as such and they communicate with others via an adhesive appliance over a conveniently places sonar transducer that translates their underwater speak to a common language used by the various sapient species of the United Federation. It should be noted that they are no longer aquatic; Their filter-gills (located on their chest) have evolved to process atmospheric gases though they still use them to eat; Blishi'i cuisine is noted for its soups as well as a particularly uncommon set of table manners.

This particular Blishi'i is a member of the United Space Fleet, which is charged with defending the United Federation as well as destroying its enemies, most notably Heresy and Corruption. This marks the organization as quasi-religious though both concepts are quite real with Heresy being direct adoption of the ideals of the Krȃng or the i'Halalaentariel while Corruption is use of ill-understood or directly harmful technologies or artifacts of either civilization. In most cases the first is more hastily pursued than the second; The i'Halalaentariel are generally seen as watchers who have removed themselves from the galactic stage - Ascended Guardians. This does not mean that their ideal or technology are wholly harmless but certainly not as outright malevolent as that of the Krȃng nor likely to lead to their resurgence and domination. Aside from this task the BUSF also performs the normal duties of a military space force - patrol, enforcement, rescue, exploration, and intelligence gathering.

Contrary to what might be suggested, the BUF is a peaceful civilization that is all too aware of the dangers of the galaxy; As example, the i'Halalaentariel subjected the planet Blishi'i to intentional nuclear winter some eighty-thousand years ago to deny the Krȃng potential reproductive stock. This wiped out a species on the verge of sentience and paved the way for the later evolution of the Blishi'i. Their preference is peaceful exploration, communication, and trade and this is reflected in the mannerisms of the BUSF. While their ships carry their weapons behind visible but concealing hatches, the officers conceal their weapons and armor in order to present a more peaceful demeanor. There are no common crew on a BUSF vessel as automation and self-configuration have eliminated the need so instead there are two ranks of officers; Fellows and Paladins occasionally augmented by the Clerics of the Inquisition.

In the regular service, the Paladins serve as the commanding officer while Fellows are their juniors. Neither rank is explicitly divided further but both carry their history as part of the robe-like uniform they wear; The characters on the brow and on the lapels show the officer's history from duration of service to postings to notable actions. According to guidelines the Fellows are supposed to sort themselves out according to suitability for each task but there is always a measure of interpersonal relations at play with the ranking Paladin having the final authority as to the seniority and responsibility of their Fellows. As illustrated, Fellows wear a uniform marked in silver trim and characters while Paladins substitute this with gold; The Clerics of the Inquisition instead wear crimson robes with black characters and trim. The robes are fixed to the upper edge of the armor all officers wear underneath at forearm, shin, and neck. Getting dressed in the morning is a pain in the posterior.

[Sunset]

Katryna's Condominium, Landor City, Terra Incognito...

"...draw to your nose, touch your ear with your thumb, check the target, hold your breath for a moment, find the instant when all is still, release the string, keep your bow up..."

Two arrows sailed away, arcing out over the railing and the city street below where they passed unnoticed by the pedestrians as they walked to their own destination. Over the trees that dotted the raised sky bridges connecting one building to another, over a canal where fish churned to the surface in search of a scattered handful of food, over a living wall draped with green where fruits both familiar and exotic lurked just outside an open window. Again they crossed the railing of a balcony to find their target, a large leaf-shaped backstop in the Elven style where one neatly sliced the vein between excellence and perfection while Mahini's shaft sunk solidly in the first.

"Good," Urandil's voice rose from a whisper, "In time, you will be able to time your release to the wind, to the place between heartbeats, to the flex of the shaft, to the dew in the string. All things come with practice," and he took up his own bow, stepped up to the mark on the Silaco's balcony deck, and then stepped back only a slight bit before raising the graceful curve in a single motion that carried now-nocked arrow to his own cheek and the imperceptible baldness left by years of string sliding over fine-haired skin. Whether he held his breath as instructed neither could say but the arrow leapt not with a sharp twang as their own had done but with a snap and a pop as only a moment later the serrated head broke the bulls-eye to bisect it from edge to edge. A moment later a robotic arm built around wooden limbs reached up to pluck it from its place and leave the marker for his shot in its place.

"Not with the bow alone," he added, a subtle gesture with the bottom limb of his own sending the two back to the mark. "You must sharpen your ears. Exercise your minds and your bodies. Listen to the world around you until even the subtle hint of my breath..." Twang-Twang, Thwap-Thwap, "...will be to your advantage."

Whether or not his subtle interference might have been the cause, Mahini celebrated while Aviandri grimaced and plucked another arrow from her quiver to right the wrong of her previous shot.

"Only on the battlefield where their flight is guided by need rather than virtue do we shoot in haste," he cautioned, though it wasn't enough to stop her from setting the near-same mark with her repeat. "When you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

"How long have you been shooting, Master Urandil," Mahini asked, taking the instruction to heart as he leaned on the table to select his next shaft from the assortment.

Taking three from the boy's hand, the elder turned them over in his fingers and rolled them slightly to examine everything from the curve of the feather to the balance of the length before handing one back, "The time of our people flows in a less rigid manner to your own; I have been at the string since I was first able to grasp the bow. In those times there was always need for a skillful archer - not so now, where sport has replaced blood."

Now he taught, though there was still honor in that rather than lifting the bow in defense of wood and hearth. To teach the young, to keep the traditions of his people alive - where would he himself have learned if not for the hands that came before him? In patience he waited while the two fired their quivers bare before taking another shot and more swiftly taking his second arrow and a tiny step back to let fly before the robot could pluck it away, the shaft of the first splitting neatly in its grasp.

"The finest among us could repeat the same feat a dozen times, or ring one arrow with six. Practice - a hundred arrows becomes a thousand, and ten thousand becomes skill. Another quiver for today;" There was a rattle as the drone delivered their arrows back to them, depositing them on the glass-topped table in a neat bundle before the two grabbed them up and returned them to their quivers, "And then let your strings rest. I will return next week," though he stood motionless behind them as they repeated his instructions, each breath a whisper as he repeated the heart-worn instructions...

[Sunset]

GEC-786453Ac (Bestek), Alpha/Gamma Border Region...

With unfettered access to the Kirby Delautar, it didn't take Meli long to find what she was looking for. A hidden panel just inside the refueling well yielded a package that contained something of nefarious purpose but she left it in place, instead attaching a hacking module to the fuel system's data port. While that worked, she worked, attaching the hoses and doing exactly as required until the little transport had every drop needed to make it to the next destination. Retrieving the module, she retreated to the office just in time to adopt an attitude of couldn't-be-fucked-to-care before the pilot, captain, and lone crew returned, "Ja fahn Peter?"

A shake of his head, though only she knew the cause. Peter was rotting away in one of the wrecks outside while his house slowly went to pot and the presumed reward for his smuggled cargo went to waste.

"No..."

"Guess ya'hl catch him next tahm?"

He didn't look hopeful and as soon as the shaggy-haired independent returned to his ship she went to the keyboard to confirm why. The port logs told half the story and the data files on the hacking module the other; Kirby Delautar had docked here only once before and that had been nearly five years previous. By its own logs the merchantman was a rogue trader, criss-crossing the galaxy with the kind of short-haul cargo that paid the bills and bought a night of carousing at the local establishments but little more. It wasn't a bad life but the side-cash from a smuggling job would be a couple weeks vacation from the stick with little apparent risk. She'd leave it to moulder; Taking it would reveal her hand and here the data was more important.

"If Ah were to guess, Ah'd say this was a one-time deal. Tahk this here, give em tha code phrase, get'cher money. Which ahlso means he probably doesn't know who exactly hired him..."

"A dead end?"

"For us," she sat back. "But Ah'll send ahl this back to the analysts. Interestin' how ineffective this stuff is, fer the money. Effective, sure, baht to cover yer tracks you gotta pass things through a hundred hands, a hundred payouts, ah'll to kill as many people ahs Ah kin kill in a couple o' seconds."

"I'm sure their goal is to avoid having the absolute source of the action uncovered, and thus receiving a visit from you," ScLappi pointed out, staring at the logs as though they might tell him something new. "Interesting - he's been all the way to Sessool and even up into the HSE. Not a particularly fabulous life, but one of interesting sights. I see no need to retire to such a life - I'm sure we'll see as much, at least until someone decides to eliminate us from the equation."

"Bring em on!"

Confidence set aside, Meli joined him at the shoulder to look over the logs, "No good indication of whar he picked up tha' job, but do Ah want to rattle his chain ah bit and see if ha'll cough up? Ah'm thinkin' no. Tha'll have ahl kind'o ways to figure out who set up the drop - tip him off ahn he won't go bahk to try to get another job from the sah'm source..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Aayrid, En Route from Ares to Circlet II via the Aurora Transit Network...

"No, I don't want you to come with me," Ambassador Love repeated for the third, fourth, or fifth time - she wasn't sure which. "I'll be fine. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, this is a chance to stretch myself..."

A chance to spend a few weeks or even a month away from a child who had glommed on to his new teacher with a passion that was both sweet and frustrating, a chance to move through a new culture out from under the shadow of her partner's ever-present big stick, a chance to turn her tongue in knots learning a language as distant as it was difficult. In just a few minutes the Aayrid would move through the queue to the front of the line, the artificial wormhole would spill wide, and the diplomatic cruiser would arrive in the same system where the i'Halalaentariel had entered the galaxy not too much previous. A few days there to deposit some research teams who were tagging along in the spare suits and the ship would turn around and head through the same gate to arrive in the neighboring Canis Major II. The initial itinerary had put their next destination as the Union but events elsewhere had suggested putting a hold on further contact with that enigmatic ascendancy until further intelligence groundwork could be done.

"Et cetera, et cetera. I'll be fine," she repeated. Taking Erika's holographic elbow she pulled her to a kiss and then released, "Bye - I've got a diplomatic staff meeting."

To run, and it wouldn't help her chances of success to have the senior-most diplomat in the Republic always standing over her shoulder glaring - Erika almost never glared, but the mental image was there - at the envoys and attaches who were accompanying her. Even better, it would leave her partner to deal with Nathyn for a while. Second-time mother or not, Katryna had been an entirely different animal (or machine) to raise than the toddler was turning out to be and even a mother's love sometimes wore thin. Very, very thin. A quick check of her uniform in the mirror and she stepped out into the hallway to nearly get run down by a pair of joggers who had turned the circular corridor into their morning routine. The near-collision was less annoying from the happening than from the over-the-shoulder glimpse of two pert little behinds reminding her that she should be doing the same.

"Tomorrow..."

Or maybe before lunch. She didn't like meetings, they didn't like meetings. She could get it over with and then go try to not embarrass herself in front of the kids. But first she continued along her previous flight plan towards the appointed meeting room, mentally reaching in to her reality and turning off the translation software sitting between her brain and her mouth, "Time to torture the staff."

That's what she tried to say, at least. She'd been practicing the dominant tongue of the Blishi'i for all of two days and it didn't sound as flawless as the AI-driven learning software made it sound. Or maybe it did - that was the thing with a completely new language. Until she engaged a native speaker in untranslated conversation she'd never really know how it was supposed to sound. Or whether she was insulting their mother, father, and all of the barnyard animals they had fornicated with the night before. But she could torment her own staff who would be using translators; None had either the gift or desire to learn new languages as far as she knew.

"Might be wrong," she said aloud, drawing a look from a crewman as she passed. "In fact, I'm going to walk in there and everyone in the room will be doing a song and dance number in Old Central Blishi'i..."

They weren't and she wasn't. Instead they were all gathered around the table looking at a recording - probably passed over by the Ojeni before it had departed the system - of a young female Blishi'i pouring a bowel full of something onto her chest and between her breasts. Except they weren't breasts, though the shape was close. Instead bright slashes of purple shown as the thick-looking fluid flowed through and down onto the table; "I'm not sure if I should be thinking that's hot or that's hot," one said, his back to her, "Cause that looks hot."

"Is that..."

"Yep," he straightened up and turned to her, the tags on his shoulder identifying him as her senior-most attache, "That's how they eat..."

[Sunset]

The North Shore, GEC-1042091C...

Strong kicks propelled Timmons through the water just a few feet from the sparkling crystal surface, the power of his seemingly inexhaustible muscles covering ground at a rapid pace while ripples of sand passed behind him in wavering parody of white line fever. On one side then the other were the broken slabs of a coral reef dotted with color and life and his head turned from side to side to study each one, his broad features obscured behind the half-silver reflection of his diving mask. In one hand he carried a spear gun and the serrated arrowheads moved from point to point as he sought both dinner and the elusive shimmering blue immortal fish they all sought.

Or at least he sought.

For much of the afternoon it seemed as if Annya had onstead been seeking relief from the sense of boredom that was slowly enveloping them by engaging him in the most random conversation. Certainly when you've seen one spectacular undersea reef glittering and flowing with life in all its extended varieties you've seen them all, though that was clearly sarcasm. Each turn of the corner and hop over a section of deep blue sea seemed to reveal something new whether it was a strange turtle-like creature with a colony of smaller pseudo-mollusks having built up a residence in its shell or the tall spire of a shattered undersea palace that had toppled under Kion bombardment eons previous. That had chewed up a solid day of exploration but had yielded nothing of immediate value; The palace had been a museum and the exhibition long ago fled into the depths.

"...I mean, they could have evolved and ascended into some sort of post-Biological super-fish by now. Sure, a lifespan of that level would seem to imply an incredibly stable genetic base but we're talking seventy-bajillion years - unless they only reproduce every ten thousand odd. Given the predators..."

A mound of rock un-cared of by the two moved, sand and silt pouring off scalloped sides and past teeth of surpassing size as the monster behind it surged towards the passing furball. Kicking furiously and with a yelp she tried to escape but it was nearly as long in body as the distance between the two and with a squeek the jaws closed completely over her.

"See?!"

"Yeah... Hold on!" Adrenaline surged as Timmons pushed himself onto his back, fins still swinging back and forth to put some distance between him and the teeth. The four deadly tips came up, now savagely small by comparison, and the long-unused lines and cones of threat and guidance software overlaid his vision. All around him the red cone of certain danger loomed and he swept the weapon across the slim line between neck and body to pull the trigger four times in rapid succession, each sending a dart back along his own green line to sink fully into the beast, "Yeouch!"

She was lucky to be alive but there was no time to complement her luck; Ignoring his attack the leviathan closed on him with a snap, one long tooth tearing a fin into a ragged pair. The survival knife in his hand was deadly sharp and he speared it forward to catch the fish solid in the eye, green-white ichor surging out of the destroyed orb. A snap in reflex and he could feel the lips nibbling at more sensitive regions in a different kind of desire and he stabbed again, plunging the blade through the sightless pit and deep into whatever motivated it to twitch and stare. The edge slid along something smooth and he pressed it home until his forearm ran along the same and he pressed his shoulder to the socket. Thrashing violently, the thing carved out its own cavity on the knife, throwing him around in the water as it did. His mask came off and he pushed a broad palm against the side of its head to pull his arm free, abandoning the weapon and heading for the surface.

A gasp of air and he looked around, lopsided fins pushing him in a circle as he scanned the water around. An instant later the bulk of the fish broke the surface, a single sword-shaped fin slicing open the water and then slapping down again as it rotated. Gore traced its way around him but for the moment he forgot the risk of secondary predators to grab the jaws and haul them open, reefing them back until there was a vicious crack as the joint broke and fresh blood joined the old, "Annya?!"

"I'm here," came the voice, half-blubbed from the water sloshing around. "Pinned, but okay."

The mask had rejoined him on the surface and he threw out the water before pulling it back into place and diving below again to seek out the quartet of holes that weeped orange-red trails. He had no knife, but with purchase gained he stuck fingers in one hole and then another to tear them apart and expose the thing's throat. One of his bolts had pierced the Shepard's leg but there was no blood - she had none to give. Piercing through to whatever skeleton was beyond, it had been stuck in place but now he was able to pull her leg off and it through, freeing the young woman, "There!"

"Still hurts like a bitch," but she swam free of the corpse without favoring it to dive deep before shaking her fur free of ichor, "We should get out of here... There could be more, or other predators attracted to the body!"

Timmons cast about for the spear gun which has also followed him to the surface and floated just a few short strokes away, "Hell no! I'm thinking beach barbecue!"

[Sunset]

Port Io'Caine, Pyder Star System (GEC-1344244), Canis Major II Dwarf Galaxy...

"...now, any other one of you liars would tell you that we were outgunned ten to one," Kami went on, her voice half-rising towards a shout as she struggled to be heard over the clatter and hubbub of the bar. "But that's not what this story is about, so I'll be telling you the honest truth..."

The others gathered around the table stared at her, captains and officers all, and she paused dramatically for a moment and then took a swig of her beer - it was beer, wasn't it? - and then wiped her chin with her sleeve, "God's honest truth was that we were outgunned four to one and out-massed like me and Krumpkins here," she gestured to the largest of the gathered sending a slop of amber liquid over the side of the mug where it joined a hundred years worth of others, the floor so little cleaned and so well libated that it had taken on the same golden sheen.

A roar of laughter answered her and even from the well-past-heavyset Krumpkins, a spacer from an unknown species that carried both the size and worst attributes of a gorilla crossed with a rhino. He was not the only new face; While several of her own officers were scattered around the watering hole, most of the patrons were representative of the Federation's core species with the majority of those being the aquatic humanoid Blishi'i. That probably explained the overt saltiness of the ale though few could complain about the taste - again, it was beer, wasn't it? One or two looked at her as she went on with the tale but most paid attention to their own pursuits, whether conversation or drink, and she to hers. Like her, they were looking for information and in their own way - hers with a story, theirs with whatever encouragement they could devise.

"We gave them a good fight though, and as sure as I'm standing here today it was the best fight you'd ever seen. They dove, we dodged, they fired, we swung around," she brought up a tiny fist and swung it, missing a towering colossus by half-an-arm - not that it would have done anything, or so the woman thought - again earning laughter as the slender Human gave illustration, "And pasted them across the chin! Every trick in the book and more that I thought up on the spot." In her head she struggled to come up with details but it had not been her ship and perhaps - it was beer, wasn't it - the alcohol was having more than a little effect on her creativity, "Every trick! The Kansas City Shuffle! The Rope-a-Dope," she dropped back onto her heels, bouncing up and down while punching with the other fist and trying not to lose the last of her drink.

Why had the sign at the door said 'One Drink Maximum'?

"The... Did I already mention the Kansas City Shuffle?"

It was Krumpkins - Captain? - who held up a gigantic horned finger, "What's a Kansas City Shuffle?"

"That," she held up her glass and stared forlornly into the hollow depths, "Is where they look right..." She hefted the mug, caught the eye of the closest bartender, and hurled it towards the long-limbed young man who caught it easily and with a roar of approval, "And you go left," she finished, hefting Krumpkins glass and taking a swallow just as he looked down to find it missing from between his hands. The rest of the table howled and pounded the oak while she set it down and slid the empty back across to him, "But skill and luck will only hold out so long and they got in their own punches. So there we were, the two of us adrift with the only difference between us the hole in her bridge and the frosty stare of her captain. Every system was damaged or destroyed except, by fortune, our drive and plant. And what were we to do? My chief engineer - bless his soul - was bleeding out like a stuck pig... Though," she looked around to spot Commander Eye'Tumno and direct the collective gaze of the table in his direction, "The new one is a fair sight better!"

The word-play brought a couple chuckles and she continued, "No repairs to be had, except what we could do with our own three left thumbs! What's worse, their last shot had sheered our radiators right off and all of us were getting ready to stew in our own juices! Well, I pulled my shirt off," she grabbed the hem of her uniform blouse and caught the eye of the only half-decent looking fellow at the table, who smiled back as if daring her, "And racked my... rack looking for a solution. 'Even if we jump home, they'll pull us off the ship as racks of ribs,' I said to myself. That's when it hit me - ribs! Hung up in our locker were a half-dozen prime sides of beef! Well, as fast as I could figure out how, sweat pouring down my body and mind faltering in the heat, I routed the thermal conduits into the meat locker and none too soon - it seems those pirates had friends and just a minute more and we'd be pop-sickles ourselves! A click and a clack," her fingers threw imaginary switches and she stabbed her forefinger down onto an imaginary button laying just in the middle of the tab, "And their opening salvo passed right through where we'd been a moment before."

"I tell you, gentlemen," she stood up and wiped her brow, "When we got back... That was the best barbecue I'd ever had!"

[Sunset]

The Ruins of the Market on Lethon, Alpha/Gamma Border Region...

"...what are we doing here?" Ambassador Prear asked, a question in response to a question, "We're doing exactly what we told the Roanians at the outpost we're doing. There were people here that had some connection to the Republic in various ways and their families have asked that we make an effort to recover whatever remains or personal effects might have survived in order to return them to their families. A pretty standard humanitarian gesture, all things considered."

Not that there was much in the way of remains or effects to recover. That much was immediately clear from looking out the false window set into the shuttle door; Outside the former thriving market in sapient flesh had been transformed into a blasted hellscape of toppled buildings and burned out structures by the orbital bombardment that had ended the trace of civilization that had inhabited the planet before hand. If it could be called civilization. Lethon had been the largest slave market in the immediate area with a transient population many times its permanent one. There had been stalls and homes, markets and cages - and nothing but ash and ruin now. Already the city was fading back into the rocky desert surrounding it and eventually it would disappear just as its predecessor somewhere else had.

"...and are we going to object to its destruction? Publicly, no. As far as we're concerned, the Roanians have done the galaxy a service. Destroyed a great center of the slave trade. Doesn't mean they're not idiots," he grinned ruefully, the very tips of his fangs showing past the corners of his mouth, "Well, maybe idiots is too harsh of a word. We let it be known that Lethon was a useful asset in monitoring the slave trade in this area, and we also purchased a large number of those slaves and re-settled them on our own worlds. Presuming the Roanians aren't Grade-A Morons or simply being obnoxious tools, they did this for a reason. Not that those soldiers would have told us even if they did know."

He had his doubts that they did. There was an official reason; The inevitable expansion of the glorious empire until its light touches the entire galaxy. But that was a dumb reason and Ambassador Charlie Prear had been playing the game long enough to know there was a dumb reason and there was a real reason.

"Whatever the real reason was - if we luck across it - it doesn't really matter except for the hundred thousand or so odd slaves they vaporized for no good reason other than being here. You'd figure they would have gone with a ground invasion, saved some lives, put them to work building... I dunno, rice paddies or something. Better life in Roania than life as a slave."

"Maybe they killed them for a reason," Thomas pointed out. He was Charlie's newest attache - this very assignment, in fact - and the young man was enthusiastic and full of suggestions. At least when the Ambassador wasn't yakking his ear off.

"Maybe. That's what I was just thinking - dumb reason, real reason. Same with us, of course."

In the center of the passenger cabin was a large wooden crate very much visible from the door and exactly where the Ambassador had intended it to be. Written on the side in various languages were warnings noting that it was - or at least would be - containing the remains of the formerly living and would be thus something of a biological hazard. Not that he would have let them search the shuttle anyway - diplomatic territory, as far as that was concerned - but they clearly saw the crate, saw the labels, and when they reported back the hopeful assumption would be that they would be storing the remains in the crate. Again, given the size of the crate and the devastation around them that would have been optimistic but with a single foot Charlie kicked over the crate; Nothing more than a hollow shell.

When they had moved the shuttle into the midst of the ruins, they had set down directly on the belly and the reason was now revealed. Under the crate was a panel and with a touch of a wall-mounted control panel this slid aside to reveal the scorched ground below. Getting down on his hands and knees the Neko reached into the hole, curled a hand into a fist, and rapped sharply on the glassified sand with his knuckles - once, twice, three time's the charm. The grey glass cracked as the ground below it retreated and then fell aside into a squared-off empty space that led into darkness. After a moment a long green reptilian hand emerged - which Charlie took in his own half-furred mitt - with sinuous double-jointed fingers bedecked with rings of extensive value and this was followed by the cuffed sleeve of an elaborate silk robe and then by the graceful form of Jero Heron, slave merchant and carefully cultivated Republic asset.

"Mr. Heron - Jero," Charlie smiled, "It's good to see you again..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Springbok, Intergalactic Space, Just outside the Milky Way Galaxy...

"All systems show green? Alright - let's see if she blows up again..."

One might think that the perfect place to test a new classified drive system would be in the cold depths between one galaxy and the other but they would only be partially correct - and thus not perfect. Certainly the location was isolated; There was nothing for thousands and thousands of lightyears in any direction aside from Springbok, Wright Brothers, and of course NX143 herself. That and a few hundred thousand C'tan warships but they hardly ever bothered anyone unless they needed a cup of sugar or some butter and they always invited you over for fresh pumpkin bread afterwards.

The location was also very, very isolated. It had taken the three ships nearly two weeks to reach their destination and while Wright Brothers wasn't exactly the fastest ship (some might call Recovery Cruisers whale-like) it had made the journey in a respectable time. That also meant that it was the only source of both spare parts, new parts, and technical services for the little flotilla as the little Halo-Class Springbok was nearly all engine and very little crew. If something went wrong - and it had already gone wrong several times - then one, two, or all of the ships would have to return to the closest Republic port or wait for another ship to cross the picket line. Every time that happened it would increase the chance that they would be detected, possibly observed, and presuming they then detected the observation Commander Brown would have to order the task force moved again. The last and largest risk, of course, was that NX143 would go rogue and disappear.

She'd done that once before, outrunning even the sprightly Springbok - the designated chase-ship - to vanish into interstellar space and who-knows-where. Fortunately TRIPWIRE had been able to track her and the Ensign who had forgotten to plug in the tracking beacon had been chucked out an airlock. Were that to happen out here far outside the watchful gaze of the TRIPWIRE array the ship would be lost and the Ensign presumably left outside to freeze.

"...on your mark, Lieutenant," Brown offered, sitting back in his chair to pull up the spread of data feeds as well as the bridge-forward view as relayed from NX143; "Commands relayed, course laid in and synchronized, ready check... All systems read green. Test beginning in three, two, one..."

Red energy crackled around the distant ship as her Quantum Frameshift drive turned over, stretching out to cover the entire ship in a long spindle that wavered and shook to near-nothingness as it flowed over her outstretched stabilizer wings. An instant later and before the disappearing light could even reach the Springbok she was gone, the smaller starship instantly giving chase as per the Lieutenant's instructions. They would only cover a few lightyears - exactly ten - but already the first ship was nearing its destination before the second could fully engage its drives. But only seconds later it had both shot into warp and dropped out again, coming out not far away at all from the triangle-shaped ship while the Recovery Cruiser followed at far more leisurely of pace.

And all nearly nose-to-nose with the strange multitude segmented shape of an i'Halalaentariel WarSphere.

"Lieutenant, please tell me I'm imagining this..."

[Sunset]

SDF-Ojeni, En Route under SuperCruiser through the Blishi'i Interior Expanse, Blishi'i United Federation, Canis Major II Dwarf Galaxy...

Looking through the virtual windows that lined one side of the small conference room, the mostly academic question of the status of Canis Major II was made slightly more real. Stars streaked past here and there but on far less occasion than they would back home where the star-field would be a constantly shifting blur representational blur. Here they were individual meteor; Lines long or short in every color from deep red to orange and here and there into blue. Was it its own gravitational construct on the level of Andromeda or was Canis Major II more simply an enormously thin trailing extension of the spiral arms of the Milky Way itself with hand stretched out to grasp or release? From where she stood she could only side with those philosophical astronomers who designated it as a region of the second. One star slowly followed another far less quickly than at the core; Simple mathematical regression. That Ojeni - and thus she - was here was a question of beauty and wonder completely apart from that.

"The Ver'Un'Guun," she turned to the table where her command staff sat waiting, some still looking out past her slender figure to indulge further in galactic navel-gazing, "Are the most prominent threat that the Blishi'i face along both the Inward Frontier and across their borders in general."

Technically the notion of borders in space were just that - notional. Drawing an imaginary line or bubble across three-dimensional space where each ship and even entire navies were little more than specks of dust was simply laughable but that did not stop most powers from undertaking it in one form or another. The Republic had the Ares Sector, a volume of space that it aggressively patrolled and defended against hostile powers but this too was inside or adjacent or even around the Raumreich Oversector which was in turn somehow part of the Solarian Reaches that encompassed Sol and its environs which... Pointless; With a wave of a hand she produced a hologram above the table of the Blishi'i's primary villain.

"Or more properly, the Ver'Un'Guun Warlord Poot;" There was a few snickers, though all eyes were now fixed on the figure, "Apparently they go in for short names. A few years ago the Warlord Iep attempted a covert invasion of the Inward Frontier as revenge for the death of his brother No, who died when the BUSF broke the siege of Eriasimus VII and he died under the guns of the Argument for Hope. There's really not a lot of room for moral quibbling here - the Ver'Un'Guun are the bad guys and pretty much the embodiment of both Heresy and Corruption. They are also going to be our primary concern traveling through this region."

"How's that," Commander Eye'Tumno asked. "The first, not the second. How are they Heresy and Corruption?"

He understood the concepts as they were presented by the Blishi'i, of course. A good week or more of shore leave and dealings at Port Ha'Bainda had exposed them all to the fervent realities of the history of the area and the Skri knew as well as anyone else that they meant both adherence to and use of the principles, methods, technology, and devices of the Krȃng and to a lesser but still important extent those of the i'Halalaentariel. As they had collectively dealt with the second, he as well as the majority of the command staff was more concerned with the first though perhaps they were going to be proved wrong, though by the appearance of the Warlord that was doubtful.

Her form - at least by Human standards - was of a tall, slender woman of stretched out dimensions. There was a certain malevolent beauty in her eyes and in her appearance but this was countered by the translucent plate of her skull and the visible brain floating inside it. A pair of tendrils trailed off down the back of her head to wrap around her neck and these too were encased by glass. Her body was mostly covered by a skin tight garment but where it was open - down the back from neck to the base of the spine - it exposed both flawless skin and a pair of prosthesis where extensions of the tendrils erupted from the skin at mid-spine to wrap up and around the ribs or to dwell in a single patch at the very base. Beyond that the garment itself was of a generic type worn as many might be across the galaxy.

"Creepy, but Heresy?"

"They worship the Krȃng," Commander Sloan injected, though she corrected a moment later, "Well, not worship, but seek to emulate. Domination at all costs with the only value they put on other sentients is as potential hosts or as chattle. This isn't their true form - just their preference - with their brain hosting technology directly derived from Krȃng technology. They also make extensive use of Great War-era devices in the manufacture of their warships and other military systems."

"Something like the Kion?"

"That's right," she nodded to Lieutenant Commander Ingersol. "I'm not saying I completely agree with the concepts as presented by the Blishi'i;" Though she, like the others, had not pressed the conflict to their hosts as a matter of politeness, "But both the Kion and the Ver'Un'Guun are potent examples to justify their position. But apparently while the Kion were only able to make partial use of the automated production facilities buried under their homeworld by the Krȃng, the Ver'Un'Guun have a particular mastery and understanding of them. Though I'm sure the Blishi'i would point out that it is incomplete - there have been several instances where the Krȃng have attempted to establish a foothold inside their space. Two were 'excised' by a joint operation between the Blishi'i and several of their more reasonable neighbors while the third was obliterated by an i'Halalaentariel WarSphere - resulting in the death of the Warlord at the time. His name was Twot."

"And Twot begat No who was the brother of Iep who sired Poot. Maybe. This whole brain-swapping thing means that it's hard to say whether the Ver'Un'Guun line of succession is a dynasty or a martial technocracy. Either way, it shows us where the line is for the i'Halalaentariel - as long as you're only using and abusing Great War technology you're okay. It's when you're letting the Krȃng sneak back in that you're up for a smacking."

"So what's the plan?"

"Well, the plan is to take a look around. That's our remit - unless Ambassador Love signs some kind of merger between the Republic and the Federation, we're our own ship and only here as the guests of the Blishi'i. But Paladin Postribr;" Who had been in command of the WarShip that had intercepted the Ojeni on its arrival in the Blishi'i Star System and had since become both host and friend, "Has asked that we keep an eye open for his brother, who was in command of a BUSF Explorer that went missing." A swirl of her finger and she replaced the Warlord with the rendered hologram of a Revelation of Grace-Class Explorer. "And I'm inclined to make that something of a priority. The problem is that the mostly likely reason it went missing was an encounter with the Ver'Un'Guun, and we have nothing beyond the broadest accounting of their tactical capabilities. Still, we'd kill two birds with one stone if we happened to find him or at least give some clue as to what happened. Fleet has made it clear that establishing friendly relationships with the Blishi'i is a priority - which is why the Ambassador made the trip - and if we take a look around we'll doubtless expand our knowledge of the region..."