Date Point 10y7m3w4d AV
Thryd-Geftry Heavy Industries Ice Mining Station 12, Jmnik System, The Njrvil Volume.
Kirk
Kirk was used to trade stations, comms relays, degaussing stopovers, freeports and all the other busy, bustling places where an itinerant sapient might fetch up. Indeed, he’d been born aboard just such a station—the now-infamous CTS591-’Outlook On Forever’
Old five-ninety-one had been a venerable sprawling hulk of a thing. She was, in the strange way that space stations could sometimes be, mind-skewingly old. There had been a station at that particular confluence of spacelanes for so long that nobody knew who had first deployed it. Over the centuries she had been added to, refitted, repaired, modified and expanded. Old segments had occasionally been cut away and recycled to make room for newer and more vibrant technologically advanced sections. She had been old, interesting and full of character and it was doubtful whether there was any original component or structure left in her, or whether a single atom of the first atmosphere to be pumped into her remained.
Through her had flooded merchants, migrants, mercenaries, miners and the generally meandering misplaced.
Such stations were inevitably shop-soiled and a touch chaotic by nature, but they were interesting.
An ice mining station was not usually any of those things, but TGHI-IMS-12 was unusual.
Usually, ice mining stations were the bottom of the bottom. They were only crewed because it cost more to insure a completely automated facility. A crew of three otherwise unemployable losers tore so much off the insurance premiums that their rock-bottom salary scarcely dented the boost in profit margin.
These unfortunates were not given any kind of entertainment beyond waxing the floors. Ice mining stations were therefore known for being both the least exciting places in civilization, and also the cleanest.
Not so for TGHI-IMS-12. Oh, it had once been a terminally dull oubliette in the ass-end of nowhere (a delightful Humanism, that) but the secession of the Celzi and their allies had kicked it upmarket practically overnight. The Dominion had needed a space station behind the new front line from which to stage their fleets, and the only thing in the right volume that was remotely space-station-shaped had been TGHI-IMS-12. Urban legend asserted that her three stimulation-starved Vzk’tk crew had died of sheer excitement when the military constru ction fleet had arrived to upgrade their painstakingly sanitized industrial array to a border outpost.
The war might be in a permanent uneasy state of de facto ceasefire nowadays, both sides being too wary to do anything which might persuade the humans to side with their enemy, but neither were they willing to tone down their pride and accept an actual, formal ceasefire or truce. Hostilities were still, officially, ongoing.
And for as long as they were, TGHI-IMS-12 was where the Dominion’s ships resupplied and degaussed, where their crews took shore leave and where traders and opportunists from all over the charted galaxy played in a market that occupied every possible shade of grey, right down to the effectively black.
It was the perfect balance for Kirk’s needs—busy enough for him to plausibly use the crowd if he needed to go unseen or effect a hasty escape, but obscure enough that the crowd itself could be avoided too if need be.
There were a lot of Gaoians today, and that was interesting because the Gaoians, as far as he knew, were being commendably stubborn about committing assets to the war. Quite aside from the rhetorical arguments about owing nothing to a war that had started before they ever joined the Dominion, they had a knack for wriggling through legal and contractual loopholes.
Kirk ransacked his memory of Gaoians, inwardly cursing his inexperience with them. The similar fur colouration and physique suggested that these males were from some Clan or another, but which one…?
That white crest of fur between their ears should be easy enough to identify… Was there not a clan called white-crest? He felt certain that there was.
And Gaoians were a high-Class species. Class eight, if memory served. Maybe nine. Not for the first time, Kirk suppressed irritation at the fallibility of his own memory—he really had been far too dependant on cybernetics.
He slipped away to the side of the station concourse and people-watched, waiting for any hint that the humans had arrived. Negotiating a place and time had been difficult and treacherous. It was clear they didn’t trust him at all, and not without good reason—Kirk, after all, had no idea if he’d really been talking with General Tremblay, or with some Hierarchy intercept.
He flexed all four of his hands to will down his nerves, and did something that was, to most species, an idea so alien that most had simply never heard or conceived of it—he prayed.
It wasn’t addressed to any specific divine being or anything. Mostly it was just a general rhetorical observation if he, Kirk, were to not only make it through the day alive but also maybe reforge his trust and alliance with the deathworlders, then that would make him very happy.
As every minute passed, however, his nerves were rising and his hopes sinking. Humans were obvious. Allison Buehler had been the focus of everybeing’s attention as she strolled alongside him during their years working together.
But then again, Julian had demonstrated an almost magical ability to slip through crowds entirely unseen and un—
“Good evening, Councillor. No sudden movements please.”
Kirk nearly bleated from sheer alarm and surprise. He did stiffen and spread his arms slightly. The Gaoian who had stepped into his peripheral vision carefully stepped around him to stand on the side without a fusion blade hidden inside a cybernetic arm. Kirk turned his head to watch him.
This one had a cybernetic left hand, and an upright bearing that seemed to communicate leadership even between species.
“And you are…?” Kirk asked him.
“Dexter. A friend of mine would like to meet you.”
“Is he a friend of mine?”
“He hopes so.” Dexter stepped away, and gestured towards a nearby maintenance door that led into the station’s crew-only areas. It was resting slightly ajar.
Kirk gave him a suspicious glance, but the Gaoian was already walking away.
He took a deep breath to steel himself then approached the door and, after a quick glance around to check he wasn’t being watched, slipped through and let it close behind him.
In the silence that followed, he plainly heard the sound of a door opening to his right. It was the hatch at the end of the maintenance tunnel, and the lights came up as it opened. There was nothing exciting about the space—it was a functional conduit for water, power, data cables and air ducts. The only details that even resembled a nod to decoration were the colour-coding on each of the many things attached to the wall.
Kirk prided himself on his rational mind and his level head. It was a matter of personal principle to him that in circumstances where others panicked, blundered around, fled and got killed, he held his nerve and stayed sharp… but he was only mortal. It took him a long time to find the courage and the rationale to walk toward that door.
In the end, what persuaded him was quite simple: If the humans were so badly compromised by Hierarchy that this meeting was to be his end, then they had already lost. If so, he’d rather die gambling on hope.
He stepped through the door.
It closed behind him, and three humans in the same heavy-duty armor he’d seen from the Capitol Station news reports made themselves visible. They were armed, but didn’t make any aggressive movements.
An old feeling of creeping awe settled on him—the same one he’d felt when he’d first met Kevin Jenkins all those years ago. There was something about the way they moved, something extra-solid, something massive in the sense of having a lot of mass, that reminded him again that he was dealing with a species that were his physical superiors in every conceivable way. These ones—who could only be the famed SOR—were larger than any other human he had ever seen by an alarming degree, even with a generous estimate for the armour’s thickness.
The armor itself was an excellent reminder that humans were also a slightly crazed species at the best of times. It looked incalculably weighty, and the men wearing it presumably needed all that size and strength just to function in it. Kirk didn’t want to think about what they must have done and endured to achieve the easy grace with which they wore it.
Cautiously, he stepped closer. The meeting place they’d chosen was a walkway spanning a chamber that formed part of the atmosphere system—a dust trap, in fact. The chamber was shaped to create a vortex around the edges that threw out the accumulated airborne detritus from TGHI-IMS-12’s hundreds of permanent occupants and thousands of monthly visitors, catching it in baffles for disposal as a compressed block into the gravity well of the gas giant below. The racing air caught Kirk’s hood and mane as he pushed through the edge vortex and into the clear air in the middle, where he stopped, standing up to his full height. He could never out-mass a human, but he would damn well win on height and dignity.
The one in the middle seemed to have a few more cameras, sensors and communications systems on him than the others, though they had their own specialist burdens. “TIBERIUS,” he said, carefully.
“…STAINLESS, I presume.”
The human nodded. “You brought your own scanner?” he asked. There was something familiar about that voice. A deep, growling quality to it that reminded him of Captain Powell, though this man was much larger than the Cimbrean commander had been.
Kirk slowly and carefully reached to his belt and the scanner he’d had Lewis design and prepare. He tugged it off, knelt his front legs to set it down, and backed off. STAINLESS tapped the man on his left on the shoulder, and that man stepped forward to examine the device without picking it up, aiming what looked like an engineering scanner at it.
“…It’s what he says it is, sir.” he reported. He picked it up and returned to STAINLESS’ side.
STAINLESS nodded. He unlatched the face mask of his helmet which came away with a sharp hiss of air pressure equalizing.
It was Powell! In addition to being larger, he was also slightly younger-looking and his thin blond hair was now entirely gone save for a pale stubble around the sides. Nothing had changed about his eyes, though. Nothing in the galaxy had a more fearsome gaze than him: cool, blue and calculating almost to the point of hostility, as if at every second he was selecting the most efficient means of killing whomever he scrutinized.
Maybe he was.
He speared Kirk with that eerie icy stare for a second, then undid his helmet as well, tipped it up just enough to expose his forehead, and pressed the scanner to it.
It immediately made a happy pinging sound and Kirk sagged with relief, letting out his tension in a very human sigh.
Powell reattached his helmet, though he left the mask off. “I take it you’re happy if I vouch for the lads here,” he said.
“Of course, Captain.”
Powell—though it was hard to tell—seemed to find this amusing. He pulled a scanner of his own from some strapping on his armour and tossed it underarm to Kirk.
It was simple enough to operate. Kirk pressed it to his head, and within seconds a green light lit up. All three humans promptly unwound, and Powell treated him to a rare smile.
“Good to see you again, mate,” he said. “And it’s Major, thank you.”
“My apologies. And congratulations.” Kirk stepped forward and extended a hand. “You have… changed rather a lot since we last met.”
“Aye.” Powell shook his hand and clapped him very gently indeed on the upper arm. “We have a lot to discuss… How about we do it somewhere secure?”
“I know just the place.”
Date Point 10y7m3w4d AV
Thryd-Geftry Heavy Industries Ice Mining Station 12, Jmnik System, The Njrvil Volume.
Regaari
“I think it’s about to go wrong…”
Regaari duck-nodded to himself. He was lurking on the station concourse with his communicator in his hands and pretending to play a game as he waited, but the game in question was a surveillance tool that was helping him tag and track dozens of aliens as they came and went.
Five were loitering in the area, just as he was. Two Vzk’tk, an Rrrrtk’pch, a Kwmbwrw and a Vgork.
“Agreed,” he murmured. He rattled off a few terse orders in the Clan’s dense internal jargon, subtly redeploying his Brothers into better positions to disrupt, challenge or even attack the aliens if they made any kind of a move.
This was not merely a mission-protecting move; it was for their own good. If those five attempted to intervene against the SOR…!
The biggest threat was the Vgork. He was an alpha male, a Class Eight native himself physically on par with all but the most exceptional Gaoian, and at least twice Regaari’s size. At a headlong charge that thick bony ridge that ran across his head from ear to ear might even cause serious harm to a human. Certainly he could bowl the legs out from under either of the Domain species and leave them broken, which was still a deadly serious injury for them even with modern medicine. Domain prosthetic limbs were superior to even the Corti version for that very reason.
Which might very well explain his presence. Or then again he could be the distraction. Intimidating as a bellowing bull Vgork might be, he was no more dangerous than any other sapient with a pulse gun.
Regaari assigned himself to deal with that one. If it came down to it he had fusion claws in his prosthetic hand, and fusion blades could stop anything. Even the momentum of a charging Vgork at full tilt wouldn’t count for much if one of his legs suddenly came off.
His comm chirped, denoting an incoming signal from an allied TacNet. ”DEXTER, STAINLESS. TIBERIUS is a clean asset and friendly. He’s returning to his ship. Shadow and report.”
He flexed his paw in a control gesture that he’d built into the prosthetic to allow him to call out without obviously activating his comm, and kept his voice low. “STAINLESS, DEXTER. We have concerning activity out here. Need a moment to make safe.”
He changed channels and spoke three words in Whitecrest tactical cant: “Cubs play pounce.”
He and his brothers moved immediately. Before they even had a chance to appreciate what was going on the three Domain aliens and the Kwmbwrw had turned in confusion as a dark and furry shape flashed past them, and then collapsed as the Whitecrest-designed sticky takedown patches did their work.
Regaari’s Vgork target was just turning to see what the commotion was about when Regaari pounced right over his back, slapped a patch to each side of his neck, and sprang off to safety and concealment before his quarry even had a chance to try and buck him off.
The Vgork whooped something, lowered his head and tried to charge wildly in the direction he thought the torment had gone, only to crash painfully to the deck in three strides as every motor muscle in his body went limp and numb. Regaari congratulated himself on giving the big guy a double dose.
“Mother says do chores,” Faarek said.
Regaari agreed. “Yes, Mother.”
The limp aliens were quickly bundled away out of sight, a feat that demanded four Brothers in the case of the Vgork. After only a pawful of active seconds, it was like nothing had ever happened.
His comm squawked again. “…Copy that, DEXTER. Sitrep when you’re ready.”
Regaari chittered grimly to himself at actually beating the deathworlder on speed, and broadcast to his brothers before replying. ”No scars. STAINLESS, DEXTER. Clear, but the clock is ticking.”
”Copy. Orders remain unchanged.”
Seconds later, Councillor A’ktnnzzik’tk emerged via a maintenance door. Amateurishly, he looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched (an action liable to draw immediate attention) and then raised his hood and headed in the direction of his ship.
The Brothers tailed him at a respectful distance.
There were no further problems.
Date Point 10y8m AV
Byron Group Headquarters, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Allison Buehler
“…That’s not me.”
“That’s you, baby.”
“But… nah!” Julian scratched at his hair and stared at the larger-than-life-size fabric print of himself that was one of several set up for the display in the Byron building’s lobby. “I’m not that hot.”
Xiù giggled. “You are.”
“Am not!” Julian shook his head.
Allison grinned at Xiù and joined in. “Yes you are.”
It was a good picture, admittedly. Julian had been caught looking strong and intrepid with the muscular mass of Misfit framing him in the background. His hair was excitingly messy, a confident half-smile was creeping up one side of his face in that way that only men seemed to have mastered, and there was a direct quote from him printed at the bottom of the picture across his shins: “If you can handle Earth, then you can handle anything in the Galaxy.”
Xiù’s picture was no less amazing. The photographer had captured her smile and shy enthusiasm, and juxtaposed it perfectly with her scars. She looked young, fresh, vigorous and she lived up to her name—Allison had discovered quite by accident some weeks before that the word ’xiù’ literally meant ’beautiful’, to Xiù’s embarrassment—but she also looked strong and ready for anything. The quote above her head read ’Sometimes our dreams don’t come true, but you can always pick a new dream.’
Allison turned her attention to the third banner, and reflected that she was probably being unfair on Julian. It was hard to really believe that the woman looking back at her was… well, her: She looked fearsome. The photographer had contrived to convey focus and drive, though they’d picked one of her softer expressions out of the many thousands of photos she’d endured posing for. The slight smile was enough to leave her looking competent rather than like a ballbreaker.
“There’s something in our soul that longs to be challenged.” she read aloud. “Did I say that?”
“You said that,” Xiù confirmed. “Look, there’s variations too.”
Allison ran her eye over them warily, seeing other pictures that painted them in different lights, including one she felt was slightly intrusive that showed Julian holding her affectionately from behind with the caption ’We can choose to go somewhere interesting and do something valuable, together.’
“This is… kind of overwhelming.”
“You should see the animated ones,” Julian observed.
“Oh, Christ…”
Xiù gave her a reassuring peck on the cheek. “Wanna know a secret?” she asked.
“What?”
“They can’t work with what isn’t there.”
“They’ve got photoshop, don’t they?”
“It’s like makeup, Al. If you pluck your eyebrows right off and draw them back on it just looks fake and horrible, right?”
“I think I speak for all men when I say I don’t understand eyebrow-plucking,” Julian said. He led them among the displays and accepted a soft drink from a waiter who was circling the ad campaign launch party. A lot of very wealthy-looking people in suits were standing around negotiating God-knew what except that whatever they were arranging presumably involved stupefying sums of money. There was a woman in the dark blue of the US Air Force chatting amicably with Moses Byron. She looked towards them and gave Julian a bright and genuine-looking smile.
He returned it a little uncertainly. “Should we know her?” he asked sideways. Allison shook her head, just as lost as he was.
“You don’t recognize her?” Xiù frowned at them. “Either of you?”
Allison contrived a subtle shrug. “Should we?”
“That’s Rylee Jackson, she flew the first human-built warp ship!”
“Did you learn about her as part of your training?” Julian asked.
“I’ve met her before!” Xiù reminded them. “She was escorting Ayma and Regaari when they visited me…”
“So she’s famous then,” Julian summarized.
“Even more famous than we’ll be,” Xiù confirmed.
“And we didn’t recognize her.” Allison considered that fact. “…Y’know, that actually makes me feel better. I kinda want to meet her now.”
“I think she wants to meet us, too,” Julian commented. Jackson had politely excused herself and was picking her way between their oversized images to say hi.
Up close, she had a lot in common with Xiù—they were of similar heights and similar gymnastic builds, though Jackson had noticeably more pronounced neck and shoulder muscles. She met them with a round of handshakes, a double cheek-kiss for Xiù as if they were old friends, and made it clear that she was to be known to them as ’Rylee’.
She immediately endeared herself to Allison by breaking the ice with sympathy. “God, I don’t miss seeing my face everywhere. How are you guys holding up?”
“Kinda weirded out,” Allison confessed, and Julian nodded with her. She indicated a nearby poster of herself with the caption ’ I don’t think people are really meant for cities and sofas.’ “I don’t remember saying half of this stuff.”
“Yeah, a little quote-mining goes a long way.” Rylee grinned. “Especially if they alter the quote a bit. Polish it up for the sound-bite, y’know? I wouldn’t be surprised if the TV ads were voice actors who’re good at sounding a lot like you guys.”
“They’d do that?” Julian asked.
Rylee didn’t reply directly and instead snagged a lemonade off a passing waiter, but her expression said everything.
“Of course they would,” Xiù said. She sounded more like it was blindingly obvious than that the thought distressed her at all.
“Why?” Julian asked. “Candid is good, right?”
“Mm-hmm” Rylee nodded. “But if you ever meet somebody who talks in perfect sound bites, they’re a politician.”
“Uh… that was a perfect sound bite…” Julian pointed out.
Rylee grinned and raised her lemonade to toast him with a wink.
“So it’s like photoshop for a conversation,” Allison summed up.
“Yeah… but they can’t work with what’s not there…” Xiù repeated.
Rylee waggled a finger aimed vaguely at Xiù. “See, this girl gets it. You said those things, and that’s you on those posters, even if they’ve maybe touched things up a bit. Get used to it, guys.” She sipped her drink. “Anyway! No more boring fame stuff, I actually have something I need to talk to you guys about. Me and some friends of mine…”
Allison looked in the direction she nodded. Kevin Jenkins was lurking in a corner, talking seriously with a middle-aged woman in a black suit whom she didn’t recognize. They noticed the four looking at them, exchanged a few more words, and crossed the lobby.
“‘Sup,” he said, by way of greeting.
“I could ask you…” Julian looked from him to Rylee. “You two know each other?”
“Distant acquaintances,” Rylee said. “I believe you named my ship, right?”
“Good ol’ Pandora, yup,” Kevin agreed.
“Good name.”
“Eh, you did better things with her. ‘Course, you probably know me from the other thing we need to discuss…”
“Speaking of which…” the woman in the suit reminded him, “the limo is waiting outside.” She had one of the very latest smartwatches, the kind with the single-direction holographic interface that meant only she could see what she was working on. Allison had entertained the thought of getting one herself, except that she’d have no need of it on the ship and by the time they got back they’d presumably be both cheaper and better.
“The limo?” Allison exchanged thoroughly bewildered glances with Xiù and Julian, who shrugged. They huddled together for comfort as Kevin gently ushered them door-wards, and invited Rylee to come along too.
“On the pretense of showing Major Jackson your ship, we’re gonna slip away and discuss something important.”
“Hey now,” Rylee objected. “I wanna see the ship anyway!”
“That’s what makes it a good pretense.”
Sure enough, a black limo had pulled up outside, and they were gestured into it by the driver, who held the door politely open until they were all aboard and belted up.
Allison stiffened as the windows went fuzzy grey and opaque. A privacy forcefield.
“Sorry for the cloak-and-dagger guys,” Kevin said. “But there’s some shit you need to know. Stuff that not even Moses Byron is fully in on.”
“What-?” Allison began, but didn’t know how to proceed past that point.
“First up, introductions. Guys, this is Special Agent Darcy, CIA.”
Darcy looked up from whatever it was she was working on and met their surprised stares with a trim, polite smile. “You can just call me Darcy,” she said. Allison decided that she was probably just super busy, rather than standoffish. She handed Julian a tablet. “Before this conversation can go any further, I’m afraid you’re going to need to sign these non-disclosure agreements.”
She handed one more each to Allison and Xiù, and they rode in silence for a few minutes as the three of them put the hard studying skills they’d developed over the last several months to work, digesting the content of the agreement.
“…Extreme sanction?” Allison asked. “Christ.”
“This is heavy stuff we’re about to play with, guys,” Rylee had smuggled her lemonade out with her, and she sipped it again.
Julian and Allison looked at each other. “Somehow, I suspect we already know it…” Julian said, carefully.
“Huh?” Xiù looked up.
“That’s why Darcy’s here. You uh… gave me enough of a hint in Minnesota.” Kevin cleared his throat. “But guys, for real. You’re gonna need to sign those. This shit is important.”
“Hint?” Xiù echoed. “…what’s he talking about?”
“You’ve not told her?” Kevin asked.
“Told me what?!” Xiù turned to Allison. “What’s he talking about? What is this… ’DEEP RELIC’ thing?”
“…Sign it, baby.” Allison told her. She suddenly felt like a total heel.
“Julian-!”
Julian, looking grim, just shook his head and started filling in the paperwork.
After several seconds, Xiù followed his example.
They rode in silence for a few minutes as Darcy collected, double-checked, confirmed and filed away the agreements. All the while, Allison found it difficult to make eye contact with Xiù. After months of being totally open and honest with one another, it was weirdly ashaming to be reminded that there was one catastrophically huge secret that they’d kept from her. Not deliberately, and not without good reason, but… it had never come up.
“So.” Kevin cleared his throat. “Xiù, you remember back in Minnesota when I gave you the job offer, I asked if any of you had cerebral implants. Translators or whatever, right?”
“Right…?”
“Well. A few years ago…jeez, where do I start?” he asked, addressing Darcy.
“Boone.”
“Right, yeah. Terri Boone. Y’all won’t have heard of her, but she was this private investigator. Just before you were taken, Xiù, some guy contacted Terri and asked her to start looking into alien abductees, and to start specifically with me.”
“That’s before the Hunter attack,” Xiù pointed out. “Nobody really believed in aliens back then.”
“Yeah. Way she told it she was kinda desperate for cash though and the client was offering a fat stack, so she set off for Texas pretty well convinced I was gonna be one of those mothership, anal probe, Area Fifty-One crop circle dumbasses, right? Well her plane landed in Dallas and she drove straight up to my bar to sit down to listen to my story… On First Contact Day.” He laughed. “I’m sitting there talking about my encounter with the Hunters, and then the stupid bastards go and attack a live hockey game right there on TV. Talk about timing, right?”
“That’s a big coincidence,” Xiù said.
“Except it wasn’t a coincidence. Long story short, she and I rounded up every genuine abductee we could find—and, there’s a lot of us—and we got wind of this new research facility being thrown together up in British Columbia. So me, her, and a freakin’ convoy of the planet’s only exoplanetary tourists headed on up there and turned over everything we had, including the working jump beacon I managed to smuggle back to Earth. The one that Ted Bartlett’s team managed to reverse-engineer into a working warp drive”
“Which was why they let you name Pandora.” Rylee said.
“Right. I stayed on up at Scotch Creek after all the others went home, ran the bar on base, did for Tremblay, Bartlett, Nadeau and all the others pretty much the same thing I’m doing for Moses Byron nowadays…”
He rubbed his chin. “Terri got in touch again a couple years later. Left me an envelope and asked me not to open it. She went back to San Diego and… next I heard of her was a phone call from a homicide detective looking for a witness statement.”
“Jesus.” Allison said.
“Yeah. The envelope contained the login and password for an online drive she’d filled with evidence. Evidence of alien covert operations right here on Earth.”
“The Hierarchy,” Julian said.
“So you do know,” Darcy said.
Allison and Julian looked at each other. “We helped Kirk find Vedregnenug.” Allison said. “And we knew he was working with some kind of security or government agency here on Earth. Hell, he dragged us to a clinic to get our translators removed.”
“…You knew all this?” Xiù asked. “What…? I thought…? But…?” she paused and gathered herself. “What the hell happened to ’no secrets’?!”
“If they’ve kept it from you, that’s actually a good thing,” Darcy advised. “You’re now forbidden from telling this to anybody else, remember.”
“But-!”
“Guys.” Allison interrupted. “Could we have a couple of minutes alone, please? Just the three of us?”
Kevin, Rylee and Darcy looked at one another. At Kevin’s nod, Darcy relented. “…Okay,” she said. She knocked three times on the front window and the limo pulled over to the side of the road. Rylee swigged the last of her purloined lemonade, gave Allison a sympathetic touch on the shoulder as she was the last out, and they were left alone.
“…Baby, I’m sorry.” Allison opened, transferring over to sit next to her.
“Sorry?! I thought your whole thing was being up-front and honest?!” Xiù rounded on her. “I… Damn it! I’m supposed to be able to trust you! Both of you!” she added, turning to Julian. “And then this-?”
Julian took her hands. “Hey. There’s nothing else,” he said, softly. “Nothing. We’re not keeping anything else from you.”
“…You promise? Both of you?”
Allison tidied a strand of Xiù’s hair back into place behind her ear. “Nothing more,” she promised. “This was the only thing, I swear.”
“And you’ll see why in a minute,” Julian added.
“I will?”
“You trust us… right?”
Xiù wiped her eyes off violently and sniffed at him. “Of course I do! Why do you think I’m so upset?”
“Trust us just a little more?”
She blinked at him, then gave him a reassuring little kiss, before doing the same for Allison. “I trust you both to the ends of the Earth,” she said. “I’m just… shaken. Sorry.”
Julian handed her a tissue and she laughed, dried her cheeks and then blew her nose, waving for Allison to open the door.
Darcy, Kevin and Rylee climbed back in looking a touch awkward.
“Sorry,” Xiù apologized once they were settled.
“Are you okay?” Rylee asked her.
“Yeah, sorry. Just… I’m… we’re fine.”
Rylee nodded, relaxed and sat back.
“So… You said the timing wasn’t a coincidence?”
Kevin cleared his throat. “We’re…pretty sure by now that Terri was sent to find the real abductees because the Hierarchy foresaw first contact was gonna happen pretty soon anyway, and figured we might be a problem.” he swiped his finger meaningfully across his throat. “I guess they were right.”
“Why? What’s their objective? What do they want?”
“All of us dead.” Kevin said. He shrugged. “Their whole deal is suppressing deathworld sophonts. Wipe ‘em out with robot armies if they’re primitive enough, get them to nuke themselves back to the stone age then wipe ‘em out with robot armies if they’re not. Y’ever hear of the Cuban Missile Crisis?”
Xiù shook her head.
“Brouhaha in the Caribbean way back when in…” he looked to Darcy. “Sixty-four?”
“October Nineteen-Sixty-two,” Rylee corrected him. “The Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba right at the height of the Cold War, our navy blockaded the island, and there was a standoff for about two weeks before President Kennedy and Secretary Khruschev negotiated a standing-down. It was the closest we ever came to World War Three.”
“Right. Well, that was them.”
“Now how do you know that?” Julian asked.
Darcy gave him a slightly smug smile. “We caught one of their agents.”
“How do they have agents on Earth?” Xiù asked. “I mean… It’s a deathworld, so their agent would have to be human, right? Are there humans who are selling us out?”
“This is why the implants are so important,” Rylee explained. “They can be… hacked.”
”…Hacked?!” Appalled, Xiù gaped at her. “Those are in people’s brains!”
“Exactly. And the poor bastards get yanked around like a fuckin’ puppet,” Kevin growled, grimly.
“In extreme cases they have a process they call ’biodroning’,” Darcy said. “And, it’s as horrific as it sounds. They take some poor abductee, scoop out their brain and fill it with control implants. They become an absolutely perfect slave. But even a translator implant will work in a pinch. Now, think of how many aliens you ever met who had more than just the translator.”
Xiù sat up straight with an expression of dawning horror and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my god, Regaari-!” she began.
“-Is under close observation and we’re doing what we can to help him,” Darcy assured her.
“But I have to-! Why haven’t you told the whole galaxy? Why haven’t you blown the lid on this?”
“Because the moment we swooped on their operation on Earth, we lost San Diego,” Darcy said. “They jumped five kilograms of antimatter directly into the heart of the city and put a new bay in the west coast that’s half a mile across. We were lucky! By doing that they also destroyed the only jump beacon they had on Earth, and the quarantine field stopped them from bringing in more. That one mistake is the only reason that we’re still here to even have this conversation right now.”
“But what about all the other species in the galaxy?” Rylee asked. “The ones who’ve got millions of civilians with implants, and who don’t have system fields? Like the Gaoians?”
“The Hierarchy are willing to kill billions. Trillions maybe. Those are the kinds of numbers they already have killed, and if we’re ever going to bring them down then we need to do so carefully, quietly and with the utmost discretion.” Darcy finished. “Otherwise, worlds will burn, including a world you personally sacrificed much to protect.”
Xiù went quiet as Allison took her hand, looked down at it for a long second, then back to Darcy. “…Can’t I do anything for him?”
“You can trust us,” Darcy said. “And trust him, too. Through Regaari, we hope to—pardon the expression—sanitize the whole Gaoian race. It’s going to take a while, though. If we’re not careful… goodness knows how the Hierarchy might react.”
“…Promise me.”
Darcy shuffled forward in her seat, earnestly. “If our species is going to have any hope of thriving or… frankly even surviving in the long term, we need friends and allies. Thanks to you, the Gaoians are the best friends and allies we have and we’re pulling out all the stops to help them. I promise, if it’s within our power…”
Xiù frowned. “…Thanks to me?”
Rylee smiled at her. “You made a good impression. Every Gaoian I ever met has heard of Sister Shoo.”
Darcy produced three manila folders from her briefcase, and handed them out. “This is the full report, or at least as much of it as the three of you need to know, but you already have the short version; that galactic society has been carefully engineered to keep deathworlders like us suppressed, and the organization responsible is actively working toward our extinction. Now, you need to know this for two reasons.”
“Which are?” Julian asked.
“Number one, you’re looking for deathworlds. Our long term goal for the protection and success of the human race is to colonize as many such worlds as we can. Get our eggs in as many baskets as possible, you see?”
Allison nodded. “Makes sense.”
“The other being that if you do find any other deathworld civilizations, especially ones who have or are approaching a Cold War era level of technology, we need to know about them so we can protect them.”
“Yeah, here we go…” Julian looked up. “This is Vedreg’s testimony! I remember him dictating it to Kirk.”
“Kirk has been working for us for several years,” Darcy acknowledged. “In fact, he still is.”
Allison closed her folder with a slap. “He’s alive?!”
“Alive and well, as are Vedregnenug and Lewis Beverote. I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than that. In fact I only became able to tell you that much just this morning.”
“That’s still great news!” Julian enthused. “Can we send them a message?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Xiù finished reading the DEEP RELIC document and closed it looking badly shaken. “Um, can we maybe be a bit more…?” She waved a hand helplessly. “How many species?”
“Several hundred, at the absolute minimum,” Rylee told her. “The good news is they’re no longer, for now, an active threat on Earth.”
“Oh, thank goodness.”
“We think.”
“…Oh.”
Kevin cleared his throat. “This is why Misfit’s emergency recall system is anchored to Cimbrean-Five,” he said. “And it’s why, if you ever punch it, you then stay still and do absolutely nothing until the SOR board you. If you ever jump directly to Sol without authorization…“
Xiù nodded grimly. “I did wonder about those rules…”
“Okay,” Allison said. “Let’s say we catch them doing their thing. What do we do about it?”
“You make best speed for the nearest FTL comms relay and send Kevin here a message with the coordinates and the words “Big Hotel” somewhere in the text,” Darcy instructed. “Then you wait for a reply with instructions.”
“Moses wants you guys to send us back personal thoughts and commentary on your mission anyway, so it shouldn’t look out of the ordinary, and it won’t be hard to fit in something about… I’unno, wanting a spa day at a big hotel or something,” Kevin added.
“We can do that.” Allison nodded.
“Good.” Kevin looked up at something outside the car. “Onto lighter subjects, I guess.”
Sure enough, they were pulling through the AAAF’s front gates. Kevin climbed out to deal with the corporate security manning it, followed by Darcy, and that left the four of them alone.
“‘Course, there’s an elephant in this car…” Rylee mused.
“Hmm?” Allison asked.
“Oh, just your whole Prime Directive, cultural contamination bullshit.” Rylee adjusted her shirt. “Big Hotel or not, let’s say you guys do find a deathworld civilization that needs us to step up and protect them. What are we gonna be to them? Gods? Angels? Strange travellers from distant worlds? Heretics who need burning at the stake?”
“Any advice?” Julian asked.
“Nomex long johns?” Rylee shrugged. “I’m not a policy-maker, so I guess how you handle pre-contact civilizations is for the three of you to figure out. You’ll be ambassadors out there as well as explorers. Do you wanna be Jean-Luc Picard or George W. Bush?”
“Jeez, that’s a hell of a comparison…” Allison said. Rylee just smiled slightly and her eyebrow ticked upwards for a heartbeat.
“You can talk to Allied Extrasolar Command, right?” Julian pointed out.
“That’s part of my chain of command, yeah…” She sat forward. “Why, do you want an official stance? Y’know, something in writing with General Tremblay’s hancock at the bottom that you can point to?”
“Could it hurt?” Allison asked.
“Could cover your asses…”
“Then yes, please.”
“Or if you wind up ignoring it, it could bury you up to your chin in shit.” Rylee bobbled her head. “I figure in your situation, it’ll be easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” She sniffed. “And a hell of a lot quicker.”
Allison, Julian and Xiù looked at one another. “We’ll… give it some thought,” Allison decided.
“You do that.” Rylee looked up as the limo pulled through the gates. Behind them, Kevin and Darcy seemed to be parting ways—presumably their business was concluded for now. “Enough doom and gloom. Let’s go meet Misfit, yeah?”