BorderLines





	The alarm screamed right in the middle of the Vieshaun's first-shift sleep 
cycle.
	He  blinked awake into cabin lights that'd gone to full intensity. Loose 
fur scattered when he shook his sleep-befuddled head before scrambling to 
disentangle the restraint mesh over the bed. There were no drills scheduled for 
this shift. That meant. . . 
	"Commander to control," the comm was flashing priority over and over 
again. "Emergency."
	He spun snout over tail in the microgravity and a practiced flick of a hind 
foot launched him across the tiny cubicle to the hatch. His claws slipped against 
the damp surface as he undogged it: the circulation system was still struggling, 
leaving condensation on metal surfaces and plastic.
	An acrid smell of nervousness mingled with the damp air and strands of 
loose fur drifting in the central shaft. A clutch of crew swarmed up the central 
trunk, clambering from branches and hatches as they scrambled to their stations. 
Several were already encumbered by the silver bulk of environment suits, turning 
them into six-limbed caricatures of Nedai as they launched from clawhold to 
clawhold up the shaft. He launched himself inwards, latching onto the synthetic 
bark of the branches with foreclaws and pushing off with mid and hind paws, his 
ears flat back against his skull.
	The screech of the alarm changed to the electrifying shrill of boost 
warning. He dove for one of the scattered emergency braces and barely got it 
locked before the entire hull  groaned. A cry and crash rang from somewhere in an 
auxiliary module and for several gasping breaths he weighed twice normal.
	A short attitude boost that had his hackles standing, despite the . 
Whatever was going on, if it was bad enough to warrant expending mass on a 
course change then it had to be serious indeed. The instant the all clear sounded 
he slammed the braces aside and gripped the trunk with all six limbs, a bronze-red 
streak swarming toward the control hatch.
	The small lock took an interminably long time to cycle through and when 
the inner hatch opened it admitted a wave of air filled with anxiety stink and a 
babble of voices and machine readings. Control was a gloomy micro-g nest lit by 
the faint glows of screens, telltales and station lighting. The central arc of 
command was surrounded by the bulky armored cylinders of recessed duty 
stations nestled into the decking, the crew members just glimpses of organic form 
and color amongst the metal and ceramics. Central command station was already 
occupied by the captain and she had plenty on her hands, sending a steady 
stream of orders to various duty stations throughout the Vieshaun's multiple 
modules. He hastened for the spare duty station and struggled down into it, 
settling his hind limbs into the resistance of the gel-lined body-hugging 
acceleration suit. "Captain, status."
	"Commander." Despite being encased in her station the captain cast a 
look his way and in the split second before she turned back to her consoles he 
saw she was shaken. Her ears were flat back against her skull and the fur of her 
muzzle was bristling. "There's something out there."
	Something out there. That didn't tell him much, but as he cinched into 
the synthetic embrace of the suit at duty station the displays started flashing info 
from the other posts, feed routed from the C-com station. He could hear the muted 
but urgent chatter from the active duty stations as a low background noise: if 
need arose he could access the individual com channels, but for the moment he 
used the command freqs. "Scan got the ping a half hour ago, sir. There was an 
anomalous reading outbound from the debris field around Dreyal 2. Whatever it is 
it's putting out a lot of noise and it's under way."
	The Commander scanned through the station displays. The yellow gem 
representing the Vieshaun's Heart cluster was centralised, its vector a fixed and 
unblinking line. Arrayed around it the sparks representing the five Talons had 
shifting indicators, showing the hard burns they were making to interpose 
themselves between the Heart, the Mind and the new icon on the monitor.
	The icon representing the alien was a bright blue spot on the screen, off 
in the mid-scan region. At that range any rebound fixes were subject to the scan's 
return lag, impossible to fix with certainty. The unknown was emitting though, 
throwing out noise across broad bands, so it stood out against the steady 
background radiation like a tree on a plain. The computer was plotting the best 
estimated position as well as displaying possible vectors with a blinking blue 
cone. He checked the attached available data.
	Then checked it again.
	"Has this been verified?" he snapped through com.
	"Yessir," the captain returned. "The techs verify sensors. They say the 
output levels from the alien corroborate. There's only one, and it's big."
	Understatement. Estimated mass exceeded eight hundred thousand tons. 
A leviathan that dwarfed the Vieshaun, Heart, Mind and Talons combined. The 
steady energy outputs were phenomenal, testifying to a drive capable of 
boosting that mass. And then the readings flickered wildly.
	"Not possible," he heard a tech yelp as the alien's vector changed, right 
out of the projected plot. That mass had bent a course change that should have 
torn it into shreds and redecorated the interior in shades of crew. Revised data 
showed the new course was moving closer toward paralleling their own and the 
thing was slowing. Gradually, but it was slowing. And that was a relief of sorts - a 
hostile would want to retain the tactical advantage of velocity - but no guarantee 
of docility.
	"No chance it's Southern," he stated flatly.
	"Our best intelligence put them months behind us as far as drive 
research goes."
	"Intelligence has been wrong before," the Commander growled. "But 
with maneuvers like those, I don't think that thing is Nedai."
	At those velocities one didn't fly a ship. One worked out where one 
wanted to go, how you wanted to get there, give the computer boost control and 
let physics take care of the rest. Things took time. The Vieshaun components had 
been traversing the system from the bridgepoint for the better part of two weeks 
and until that point everything had been smooth.
	The project had been one of many conducted by both the North and the 
South, but this was the one that had worked. The North had led the way, 
launching probes a month ahead of the Southern research. When those probes 
returned successfully the road was mapped for the next step.
	On the outside the Vieshaun was a typical Long Prowler class vessel: 
The Heart with its long backbone of gantries, living and work modules, shuttle 
housings and the shielded unit at the tail housing the fusion plant. The Heart was 
the core of the Vieshuan, carrying the other components of the vessel. The Mind 
was a self contained unit unto itself: heavily shielded, with sensors studding the 
mottled, multi-wave absorbent hull. The five Talons were the claws and teeth and 
hide of the Vieshaun. They rode the Heart for major accel and decel, breaking 
away as needed for reconnaissance or defense or attack.	
	A self-contained world capable of surviving for sojourns that might take 
years. The Long Prowler class was ideal for patrols to the far reaches of the 
system, ensuring the safety of Northern interests there.
	The Vieshaun had left Cherimainsa Highdock under the guise of another 
routine supply run to the outer research colonies. Despite the security, the 
Southern Republic Coalition doubtless knew that was just a screen and they were 
certainly watching as the Vieshaun took the appointed window and boosted out 
of orbit.
	A routine two weeks under acceleration were a time to conduct system 
tests and warmups. And then, at the projected bridgepoint, the Vieshaun 
gathered its modules, spread delicate superconducting wings and folded space 
around itself.
	The first Nedai to journey beyond the reach of the home sun.
	Supercomputers had spent weeks working out the maths to open the 
interstice, to chart the bridge between suns. The Vieshaun had ridden that space 
like a fallen leaf in an overflowing gutter: buffeted along with the flow until the 
gravity sink of the Dreyal system had drawn it down and through. The vessel had 
emerged inbound from system zenith at a significant fraction of a percent of 
lightspeed, headed toward the sullen little brown dwarf of the system Primary.
	Dreyal system was a desert: dead, without habitable planets, the test 
probes had verified that. Of the five planetary-sized masses in the system, three 
were balls of frozen rock and dust on the fringes. The innermost worlds were a 
pair of gas giants, each with their own satellites and orbiting debris clouds. While 
the probes had returned with data on the existence of the planets they had never 
been designed for detailed exploration. That required a crewed mission.
	The Vieshaun spent several weeks inbound under periodic hard 
deceleration. The long orbits of the outermost iceballs put them outside the 
vessel's immediate range but automated probes were launched on flybys. 
Meantime, the Vieshaun headed in toward the central worlds, specifically the pair 
of gas worlds and their own miniature systems of worldlets and planetesimals. On 
the plotted course they would do a flyby of Dreyal 2, the lesser of the giants, 
enroute toward Dreyal 3 and its abundant worldlets. The similar giant in their own 
system had proved to be a rich source of resources, as well as a hotly contested 
area as more and more motherlodes of ores and frozen water were discovered. 
Resource nodes like that would be vital for the first isolated Northern stations in 
the Dreyal system.
	Electronic senses had been straining hard ever since transition and on 
the long fall inwards. There was the normal background hiss from the cosmos and 
the sullen star at the center of the system. There was the hard and crackling 
interference cast from the giant twins and the waxing and waning noise of solar 
winds and magnetic fields. All natural emissions, nothing to show there might be 
others lurking in the system.
	Nothing until this.
	"Comms. They talking?" he asked.
	"Nosir," comms came back. "EM radiation but no definable carrier wave. 
Search radar, seems like. Gigawatt range and XHF. We're sending, sir. Comp 
initialized the Greeting Package."
	"Acknowledged." He scanned through the readouts: signals washing 
across their hull, course options, ship readiness. Two hundred and forty fragile 
lives in his hands. Two hundred and forty lives in a small metal can over a dozen 
light years away from the rest of civilization. It was a precarious enough situation 
at the best of times and wildcards were certainly not a welcome addition.
	Outsiders. Aliens. It was a situation that'd been contemplated and 
deemed remote at best. The Greeting Package had been a token gesture toward 
such a contingency and there were procedures but nobody had taken them 
entirely seriously. Now that remote chance was an enigmatic certainty currently 
approaching them with unknown intent and capabilities while the computer 
spilled numbers and text, trying to establish a base for communications.
	"Keep sending. Captain, maintain a standoff  of fifty thousand klicks. If 
it breaches that, maneuver. Fuel cost irrelevant."
	"Acknowledged."
	"What's ship status?"
	"All go. Everything secured, all stations report systems functional. Sir, 
Tactical requests permission to arm."
	He eyed the approaching icon on the screen and weighed choices. "Give 
it to them. Comp Threat Discrimination only."
	"Acknowledged," she said and gave orders over the com.
	New icons flashed in a corner of his screen: Missiles, beam and 
countermeasures. Armed.
	For the next four hours lifesupport struggled with the mounting anxiety 
stink that permeated the ship. On the screens the alien vessel moved closer. 
Twice there were course changes that brought some measure of reassurance: the 
outsider was maneuvering to take up a heading paralleling theirs at about seventy 
five thousand kilometers.
	It was visible at highest magnification on optics by then: an enigmatic 
speck drifting in the void.

\___0___/

	The features of his officers hung in their windows around the periphery 
of his screen. They shared somber expressions, anxious creases on their muzzles 
and the signs of stress about the eyes. All save the stargazer. He looked as 
exhausted as the rest but was fairly bristling with exuberance.
	Civilians. The Commander lashed his tail and tried to hide his 
exasperation.
	Eight more hours of beaming messages and code at the unresponsive 
alien. Eight hours of general quarters with the form-hugging suit growing ripe and 
chaffing in places it'd been guaranteed not to. The outsider vessel just hung 
there, almost motionless in relation to them. Seventy five thousand kilometers: 
well within accurate missile range but far enough to give warning of launch. Was 
that accident or design? Tactical was running possible scenarios on comp, but 
with so little info they didn't have a lot to go on.
	Scan was picking up details. Radar and lidar had pinged away 
continuously at the outsider. They knew it better now and what they knew had 
everyone's hackles up. The thing was bigger than the stations back home. A 
blunt cylinder just under two kilometers long with a trilateraly symetrical array of 
antennas arranged around the Z axis. That was the best detail they could pull.
	There was a frustrating lack of information. Until the civilain tech 
contingent contacted Tactical with a question about a detail on an image they'd 
captured.
	"How in the hearth did they get that?" the Commander had snarled when 
he saw the detailed picture of a massive, grey, scarred cylinder hanging against a 
starry background.
	They'd utilized the specialized optics on the remote observatory satellite 
linked to the spine and intended for deployment around Dreyal 3. It was like using 
a telescope to read a keyboard on the desk right in front of you, but the civilian 
techs'd cobbled up filter algorithms to turn the blurred images into coherent 
pictures. And they'd run analysis routines on the alien drive spectra, albedo 
readings on the hull materials.
	"Probably not hostile," the stargazer was saying. He was from the 
Northern Shintai peninsula. Even if the Commander hadn't known his origins from 
his bio, the speckled gray pelt and distinctive clipped accent would've given that 
away. "They're not talking, yes? Maybe they are. The emissions coming from 
them, the electromagnetic ones, they're just information probes. Radar and the 
like, yes? Just basic rangefinders, yes? There's an excellent chance they don't use 
EM for communications. They detected us before we saw them, yes? How? Not 
radar certainly."
	"Feasible," the Comms chief offered. "How then?"
	"These?. . . Ahh. . . how do you. . . yes. There." A schematic of the alien 
craft was available in the channel. "Here, these spines. Antennae? Too big? Drive 
like ours, also a possible gravity lens."
	"That's possible?" the Commander asked.
	"Theoretically. Yes. The Bridge utilizes a distortion in the reality level of 
existence. Creating a breach in the timestate. Quite possible to not break but 
ripple. Like a pondskipper sounding. Modulate and you send signals."
	"So they're more advanced than us in that field as well. But you don't 
think they're hostile."
	"Look." An enhanced picture of the hull panned across the windows: a 
dark metal cityscape of bumps and protrusions and things unguessable. "You 
see. No missiles or the like. Plenty of space for such, but none there. This does 
not have the feel of a warship. Too big, unwieldy. Too much mass for the drive."
	"Unless there's something we don't know about," Tactical rumbled.
	"Until we know for certain, we treat that as the most lethal device 
Nedai've ever encountered. We don't even know if it's manned. It might just be a 
machine."
	"Not likely. Crewed. Yes. Quite. And I believe they should be quite 
similar to us."
	"You have something to base that on?"
	"Yes. Yes, quite." Segments of the alien vessel panned across the 
window. "Here and here. Colored hazard lights most probably, within the visible 
spectrum. Machines wouldn't need those. And this," an image of blurred white 
against the dark metal of the hull, "script we think, not machine-readable forms. 
But this is interesting."
	His hands moved off-screen and the conference windows flashed 
another blurred image: blues and golds against the metal hull. "An icon," the tech 
explained. "Not enough detail, unfortunately, but art? Perhaps? Most probably 
not machine."
	"But you can't be sure."
	The tech glanced at something offscreen. "Not absolutely, no."
	"What do you know for certain? Capabilities, weapons?"
	"Maneuverable. More so than us. Superior to the talons even. Shai, and 
there is this. . ."
	Imaging showed an image of the foremost end of the alien vessel. Tags 
indicated a time lapse pictures and false colors showed blooms across the prow.
	"What on earth is that?"
	"Debris. Particles. Dust. It doesn't use ablatives, not like we do. At first 
we thought they were normal impacts, but see. . . energy output too high. 
Estimate another application of the drive field. Return kinetic energy 180degrees 
perhaps."
	"And that means?"
	"An underspace inversion interface returning kinetic energy directly 
back. . ."
	"Goodfellow," the commander interjected and the savant looked 
surprised, then his ears shrugged. "Shae. An energy barrier."
	"A shield," Tactical said when that had sunk in. "How strong?"
	"Can't say. It's permeable to most forms of radiation certainly, but solid 
matter is ionised. Perhaps only active in direction of travel. Not enough data at 
this time. We try to find out."
	For a few seconds a worried silence filled the net. Then the Commander 
snorted. "If there're going to be any more surprises I hope they're pleasant ones. 
Keep me posted."

\___O___/

	More hours ground by. The enigmatic visitor continued paralleling their 
course just under a hundred thousand kilometers out. Instruments continued 
compiling data. The life support filters continued to struggle with the mounting 
tension-scent while crew stared at their displays and shed fur into their suits, 
waiting for a change. Something. Anything.
	The Commander flexed and relaxed muscles in the restraint of the shock 
suit as he tried to work feeling back into tired limbs. The suit was rank. So was he. 
So was the air in the command deck. The crew was running ragged. The waiting 
and maintaining full alert for such an extended period was having an effect on all 
of them. He'd have to call a watch change soon and that would mean hot-
switching crews as well as undogging secured hatches.
	He eyed the hot pinpoints of the Talons on his screen. They had much 
smaller crew complements and weren't intended for long-duration
	Priority from Comms screeched through intraship even as his screens 
flashed the message. "Sir!" Comms was reporting, "They're talking! They're 
talking! We're getting a response to the Greeting. They're handshaking. . . God's 
spittle, they're fast. They've run through the standard package already. Comp's 
feeding the advanced lexicon through now."
	After the basic numbers and mathematical equations would go the more 
complicated concepts: geometry, physics, chemical formulae. From there they 
could send more complex communications protocols: for audio and video, 
language. . .
	"Activity on the unknown!" came another Priority.
	"We've got movement. . ."
	"They. . . GODS!"
	Alarms shrilled and the shock suit clamped tight around the commander 
as the maneuvering alarm screamed and simultaneously the vessel lurched 
violently and a giant hand was pressing every cell in his body into the padded 
lining as there was suddenly a 'down' and it was above him. Red flashed into his 
eyes as indicators burned across his screen: launch warnings. The upper racks 
had blown their casings and the missiles sprang away on compressed bolts 
before their primaries ignited, screaming away at sixty-Gs even as the Vieshaun 
rolled to bring the other racks to bear. The forward lasers were firing repeatedly, 
pecking away at the target with no determinable result. Something had happened. 
The computers had responded to something they deemed threatening.
	"Laser scatter!" he heard from Tactical. A laser burst. They'd been fired 
at and the machines had responded to a situation that organic nervous systems 
couldn't hope to intercept. But damage reports were still clean. . . "Window! ECM 
launched."
	"Acknowledged," the captain's voice sounded prenaturally calm. 
"Evasion patterns. All hands brace."
	"Talons!" he spat, aware he'd bitten his tongue. On his screen the 
Talons were breaking away, more icons appearing as they dumped their missile 
loads and maneuvered in bursts of chaff and ECM decoys. Dodging frantically. 
Flares of nuclear fire were pinpricks in the vacuum as ordinance detonated in EM 
pulses.
	Talon 3 vanished from track with an explosion of static.
	"Energy scatter!" he heard again.
	"Offal!" he cursed silently and watched the active captain and Tactial 
marshal their forces. Setting the Talons to evasive patterns and the Vieshaun to 
try and maneuver as best it could while bringing the remaining racks to bear. And 
on his screen the pinpoints of his accelerating missiles were winking out as they 
inched toward their target.
	"Tactical! How the spit are they doing that?!"
	"Not laser sir. Maser perhaps. High power. Very high power. And a 
excellent tracking system."
	"Sunbeams launched on spread."
	Bomb-pumped x-ray bundles launched on missiles directed on deceptive 
non-intercept courses. Automated defenses might mistake them for off-course 
conventional ordnance and dismiss them as no threat.
	And Tracking screamed out, "Incoming! Kinetics!"
	Acceleration hammered them, then a twist and lurch that made 
Vieshaun's hull groan in protest and for a few second there was nothing but the 
hiss of the blood through his system and then the world rang like a gong and 
flared white. . .
	"Commander!"
	"Burn. 3 seconds. Hold it. Release!"
	'We can't scratch the bastard!"
	"Tactical! Launch! Launch! Burn on secondaries. . ."
	"It's maneuvering! Burn! The Sunbeams hurt it! Flush the racks!"
	"Talon 5. Damage to primaries! We. . ."
	"Hull damage. Maneuvering out. Racks damaged. Blowing all missile 
covers. Damn it! Get those Sunbeams primed!"
	The gabble was on the comm channel, audible above the hum of fans 
through his now-sealed helmet. His screens were still up, most of them. The 
pinpoints of his missiles were out. Gone. Extinguished without coming close to 
their target. Talon 5 was blinking blue. Tumbling and out of action. Talon 2 was 
yellow and maneuvering and. . .
	"Talon 5. Launching," came the static-ridden burst over com. Then a 
hesitation: "Tell our families. . .you know. Detonating. . ."
	A scream that might have been the static burst through comm and Talon 
5 vanished from track. Far out in the emptiness the tiny speck of the Talon 
flushed its racks, the big warheads tumbling from the bay, aligning their solid 
laser spines as they emerged and then detonating as one in a nuclear fireball that 
swallowed a crippled Talon in an eyeblink. And the scores of x-ray lasers pumped 
by those blasts crossed the remaining distance that was nothing to lightspeed. 
They tore through metals and things that weren't metals. Irradiating, burning, and 
melting. And they tore through compacted stores of hydrogen and dueterium 
slush. . .
	"Gods," came over the net and from Talon1:
	"It's hit. It's hit. It's going up. Shave me. . . it's going up."
	And another light flashed through the bridge and his helmet even as the 
track on the bogey sputtered out and the flickering screen quietly switched to 
debris trajectories.
	"Suck that," some anonymous source crowed over open comm.
	"Damage control to Command. Damage control to module four. . ."
	For several long seconds he just panted the tinned air of the suit. Then 
realized: that flash. . .
	The exchange had lasted less than five minutes and for the first chance 
he had a chance to look around.
	The command deck was open to the spinning stars. An outer deck had 
been torn open, outer ablative shielding vaporized and shattered, metal peeled 
aside in a jagged gash across the control center that exposed conduits and 
shimmering foptics and shorting electrics. And the auxiliary tracking station and 
the two crew at their stations. . . gone. One of the comp maintenance stations 
shredded by shrapnel, the torn suits in their pods motionless and laced with pink 
crystals. Other stations were still working though, their crews doing their duties.
	And his operational screens showed damage elsewhere in the Vieshaun. 
And there were two Talons gone and another crippled.
	"Tactical," he croaked into his pickup. "Status."
	"Commander? We don't have visual. . ."
	"We have damage here."
	"Acknowledged. Sir, the alien has broken up. There was a thermonuclear 
detonation. We suspect the x-ray burst from the Sunbeams initiated a reaction in 
fuel stores. At the moment we're tracking several large pieces of debris and over 
five hundred smaller pieces. Sir. We've also just detected a modulated signal. EM 
band. Repeating it seems."
	"Beacon?"
	"Most likely. Possibly an escape capsule. Not maneuvering though. It's 
got plus vee but no acceleration. Skewed zero-five one-seventy from their original 
course. Hold on sir, the net's up again."
	Data flashed through to his screen and he studied the vectors and 
available info. Then grinned viciously and wiped his tongue over incisors, tasting 
the tang of blood. "Tell Talon 1: go get them."

\____0____/

	The loudest sound in First Squad Trooper Railet's helmet was the hiss of 
his pulse while underlying that the unchanging hum of the fans in his suit. His 
suit reeked of sealant, plastics and ozone and tension and every breath fogged on 
the scratched faceplate. He clenched his teeth to try and control the nervous 
panting while his forepaws gripped his weapon and his midpaws tapped the 
controls of his MMU. There was a slight wrenching feeling from the pack as it 
vented propellant. He licked his lips as the ponderously tumbling shape of the 
target drifted back into the center of his field of vision, the sullen light from the 
ancient sun reflecting sodium-orange from the battered white surface of the thing.
	It was a flattened wedge, the white hull singed with carbon scoring and 
marked with enigmatic logos and icons. LIDAR had mapped the dimensions 
before they debussed and the numbers approached those of Talon 1. The assault 
team knew these numbers, but it was only as they fired their braking bursts and 
slid into the shadow of the alien that the size made itself felt. The half-dozen six-
limbed space suited figures flickered into black silhouettes as they light of the 
alien sun was eclipsed and they drifted to a relative halt with the alien.
	"And that's the small fish," crackled over Railet's comm. Trooper Trailan, 
by the telltale.
	Squad Leader Chaim's bark crackled back: "Tie the chatter. Essential 
coms only."
	That was fine with Railet. His mouth was dry and tasted like his suit 
smelt. The Talons were too small to carry a dedicate Marine presence so the crew 
performed multiple roles. The non-critical personnel doubled as a limited infantry 
body: a force that was very seldom needed. In Railet's entire career, this was the 
first time he'd had to stand down from his post as backup ordinance and suit up 
for a real boarding.
	It wasn't a sensation he was relishing. Drifting in the vastness, 
constricted by the bulky hug of a suit with only a small hydroxide maneuvering 
unit, it was too easy to remember how exposed one was.
	Entry was easy to find. Strobes and a peculiar combination of yellow and 
black stripes outlined a hatch. The first team members struck with gentle 
counterthrusts from their MMUs and gently rebounded: the hull wasn't ferrous, 
the grapples on the boots didn't adhere. But there were brackets where lines 
could be secured while they worked on the mechanism.
	It proved to be remarkably simple. Whoever or whatever built the thing 
had obviously had quick entry in mind. The controls were basic, sequential and 
marked in pictoglyphs. Six Veriver Infantry 10.5mm Assault Weapons were 
trained as the valves slid open on a spartan chamber illuminated by lighting with 
a distinctly yellowish tinge.
	Just a lock. And a pretty unimposing one at that. Railet had been 
prepared for something more spectacular than this small white chamber with alien 
text stenciled across the bulkheads.
	"First team, in," Chaim crackled over the com. "Weapons live and keep 
your cameras sending. If they're alive, try and keep them that way."
	"If they don't give us a choice?" Railet asked.
	Squad Leader's helmet opaqued as the vessel slowly rotated to bring 
them into sunlight so Railet could only see his own figure reflected in the 
faceplate. "Defend yourselves, by whatever means necessary."
	There was barely room for three in the lock and the controls were as 
simple as the exterior ones. The outer valve closed and Railet immediately noticed 
the telltales in his visor flicker as the bandwidth from the exterior team dropped 
dramatically. Still enough for a feed so the hull wasn't shielded, but it was still 
damned good at blocking signals. He could also feel the fabric limbs of the 
semisoft suit constrict slightly as the chamber was pressurized and a faint patina 
of ice crystals fogged his visor. The external audio came on and he could hear the 
rustle of the other suits and a slight clink of equipment moving.
	"Oxy/nitro," came the diagnosis over the headset. "Pressure slightly 
higher. Temp still climbing. Could probably breathe it."
	He had no intention of trying, but at least he most likely wouldn't die in 
some poisonous atmosphere if something holed his suit. Not immediately, 
anyway. The suits equipment couldn't test for biological contaminations. 
	"Got something on the external audio. Voice?"
	"Shae. Check on that. Live or recording?"
	"Comp I think. Audio clearance like we use. At least they have ears and 
use a similar frequency."
	"Movement on the inner hatch."
	"Shae," Railet spat as mechanisms in the bulkheads whined and the 
inner lock swung back.
	The weapons pointed down an empty corridor.
	"Clear," Railet said feeling his blood racing, sure the monitors back on 
the Talon would be reading it. "Looks like they had some trouble."
	Corridor was hexagonal in cross-section. There was none of the 
synthetic bark that talons could normally grip, instead there were loops set into 
the walls that were paneled with something like a cellulose extrusion colored 
mostly a glossy tan.  Light came from small niches recessed into those panels and 
it had a disturbing orangish hue. Something behind the walls had ruptured and 
burned, charring those panels black in several places. At the far end another 
hatch hung open and light flickered through it.
	Nothing moved as Railet took point and pushed gently with a hind foot, 
aware of how vulnerable he was drifting forward. The corridor was narrower than 
Nedai would have built so he filled a fair bulk of it, even with his forward torso 
down. Still, nothing moved and he reached the next hatch, sweeping the muzzle of 
his weapon in a circle.
	There was a three-way junction there. An electrical conduit was shorting 
out, throwing a crackling light and making the rest of the lights pulse and dim 
erratically. But there was nothing else there.
	"Clear," he croaked into the headset and worked his jaws, trying to relax 
as the rest of the team worked up behind him.
	"Report," came from Chaim. "Team Two's cycling through now."
	If that was what they were waiting for. . . get them all inside. . . 
	"Quiet," he reported and gave a quick description of what he was 
seeing.
	Three ways. All at equidistant right-angles to the current access tube. 
None of them looked to be very long and there were hatches at the end of each of 
those. Two closed, one ajar. Split up? That was what they did in the cheap 
entertainments. And invariably ended up in a way Railet had no intention of. He 
gestured to the passage with the open hatch and nudged off with hind feet, 
keeping his weapon trained.
	Still not a sign of life. Not a sound save the crackle of arcing electricy 
from behind which still kept snaps of interference sounding through the com 
system. The hatch moved easily when he pushed it, swinging inwards. The room 
was dimly lit, this time with a dull red glow from small lights around the door. He 
snapped his image intensifier on and that limited viewscreen revealed a larger area 
with equipment in the walls: racks of hatches, small indicators flaring in the 
screen. There was also debris floating: bits of metal. He flinched as something 
larger floated by. It looked almost like an animal of some kind, with many 
segmented legs and manipulators but it glinted with a metal hue. A mechanical of 
some kind, apparently inactive.
	As were the several other he saw floating quiescent in a corner. But he 
kept his weapon trained on them as he entered the room.
	"Got a temperature difference in there," came over com. "Cooler. 
Considerably."
	"Shae," he agreed, noticing his readouts and began panning his view 
around the room. "Wonder why. . ."
	Then he yowled out loud as he brought his weapon up and started 
firing.
	
\___O___/

	The vast mass hung over him like a shattered moon. A broken landscape 
of torn metal, shorn away to reveal a heart honeycombed with rooms and 
corridors, access conduits, pipes and tubes. Twisted struts clawed at the slowly 
revolving starscape like frozen digits. A cloud of smaller debris orbited like 
drifting moonlets, glittering as torn metal struck starlight. Other lights flickered 
through the immense wreckage: steady glows moving through the maze marking 
where the motes of crews were working. Salvaging, recording, exploring. But the 
alien was so immense and so damaged they could only hope to take back a 
sampling of the secrets tucked away.
	He flexed his midlegs, tapping the MMU controls to nudge the suit 
around. The starscape rolled and a little speck swam into view, colored with a 
sodium taint from the old sun. A speck of warmth so far from home, scarred and 
torn from the brief and savage struggle. Brief flares lit where other work crews 
were busy patching the damage. That fragile amalgamation of struts and habitat 
modules had brought down the immense outsider. He wanted to believe it was 
their skill and tactical ability that'd defeated the giant. Wanted to, but couldn't. 
There was too much fate involved.
	They hadn’t come through it unscathed. Twelve dead, five seriously 
wounded. Modules shredded, the bridge in disarray, most of the ordinance gone. 
If it weren’t for the redundant systems the Vieshaun would’ve been dead in 
space. As it was the crews were stripping material from the alien vessel to replace 
components and hull material that’d been simply vaporized in the battle. The 
entire crew were working on the repairs, pulling exhausting rosters to get the 
Vieshaun functional again. That was their priority: to get out of there and back to 
Nedai. They were the only warning people were going to get that there were 
aliens and they were hostile.
	At least they knew what they looked like.
	Their. . .  guest was stowed safely. The exobiologists - the remaining 
couple – were overwhelmed. They’d been expecting algae at the best and what 
they had was beyond their wildest dreams. Their equipment and that of the 
medbay was overwhelmed.
	They’d just have to do their best.
	The Commander nudged his MMU again, an experienced burst swinging 
him around to face his vector again. The mass of the alien vessel had grown 
gargantuan, filling his field of vision completely and now he could see the flares 
marking the temporary bubbles the tech crews had set up. It was a while longer to 
decelerate into the shadow of that alien bulk and nudge his suit to a position 
where his suit talons could hook the netting set up around the brightly 
illuminated lock.
Tech chief Maetraize was waiting for him. Like many support crew who spent a lot 
of time EVA her suit was customized with a glaring paintjob to make recognition 
easy. The random orange and black stripes on her suit glared in the lights of the 
temporary habitat. She flashed a combination of forepaw digits: giving him a com 
channel.
"Commander," her voice came through when he switched over. She sounded as 
tired as he felt. "I thought you should see this yourself."
"It’s that important?"
"Shae, sir. It’s that section up there. Part of their engineering. It’s pretty gutted 
but there’s enough left to tell us a lot, even after a blast like that. They build 
tough."
"Hot?"
"Hardly anything, sir. Fusion bottles, there," Maetraize pointed toward a section 
that looked almost molten: solid masses of metal. "That’s what blew when the fuel 
cooked off. Fusion reactors feeding magnetic bottles. The explosion blew through 
the ship like a high-pressure hose through a varrick warren. But what we found 
sir. . . "
He’d seen the vid feeds from the Vieshaun, but seeing it with his own eyes was 
something else. Moving through the gutted remains of the alien wreckage. The 
huge panels and plates peeled away like fruit skin. Structural girders the width of 
a Nedai’s torso bent like string. Vast structures melted and slagged. Other 
sections seemed unscathed: sections of the outer hull, skeletal remains of 
structures inside. The ultra-dense material plating so much of the hull that was 
like metal with a diamond structure: impervious to plasma cutters and multi-
megatonne strikes.
"It’s mostly hold space, sir," Maetraize said. "Filled with ore. Iron, nickel, copper. 
Tanks of water, nitrogen and hydrogen slush. There’s refining and manufacturing 
equipment, mechanicals of all kinds. It’s a prospector sir, not a warship."
"A miner."
"Shae, sir. That’s my best guess. Mostly automated. The crew, what there was, I 
think we found it all. And sir, they didn’t fire on us."
He felt his guts clench and twisted his suit to try and see her. In the shadows she 
was nothing but a bulky suit and faceplate. "What do you mean?"
"Over there sir," she gestured toward the rear of the vessel and a torn antennae 
array. "It's a communication array. There's stuff there we've never seen before, 
but there's a laser in there."
"A communications system. A tightbeam." 
"Shae, sir. Suppuratingly powerful too. The emitters are toward the rear, where 
the drive was located. What we detected was probably backscatter reflected our 
way. Comp picked up on that. Misread it."
"They don't have laser weapons? None?"
"The main weapons seem to have been advanced mass drivers. There were also a 
couple of what we think are particle beam systems of some kind. We found one 
laser mount, probably point-defense and it's a completely different freek. Not 
what the machine registered."
	His guts churned again and he looked out to the infinite blackness; 
twenty years in space and this was the first time for a long while he’d ever felt like 
vomiting. The suit’s ventilators hummed beneath the hiss of his blood, telltales 
reflecting faintly in the faceplate.
	"Just a miner," he whispered.
	"And we don't know who or what it was signaling," Maetraize noted.
	Oh, gods.


\____O____/


	It'd taken eleven days to get the Vieshaun's systems back up to 
operating levels. For eleven days Long Prowler had drifted with the alien derelict, 
describing a tumbling line through the fringes of the desolate system. Crews 
worked around the clock, repairing the Vieshaun and stripping everything they 
could out of the alien.
	Eleven days of drifting defenselessly, of feverish effort before the fusion 
torch was finally lit and the vessel began course corrections to return to the 
Bridgepoint. There was still a long way to go and every hour they spent in that 
system was an hour closer to another outsider discovering them; an hour's less 
warning for their world. The Vieshaun's passive sensors - and occasionally the 
active ones - had been working overtime, but there hadn't been a sign of any 
other outsiders. Not a ship, not an occlusion of starts, not a signal or a stray 
electromagnetic whisper.
	The subliminal thrum of the main drive permeated the hull. The 
atmosphere still reeked of ozone and coolants, burnt metal and plastics, 
condensation and the permeating tang of many Nedai living in close proximity. 
There were places through the ship where the patches on the inner hull were 
quite visible, places where the heating coils were fully functional.
	The Commander stood in the medical section, his claws hooked into the 
ragged synthetic bark of the matting as he looked through the port into the sterile 
white of the quarantine area. Bright lights glared down on the alien assembly in 
the middle of the room, reflecting off the diamond-hard transparent lid and its 
contents. He regarded that mass of outsider technology and organics and what it 
cradled. They'd been fortunate in some ways: the boarding party had been using 
fragmentation flechettes in their weapons, designed not to penetrate hulls and 
bulkheads. The capsule had withstood the trooper's assault. It'd probably have 
withstood a tactical barrage. And it'd been easy to shift the entire module out of 
the escape vessel.
	It was understandable to see why the trooper had startled. To have that 
loom out of the darkness. . . his mane bristled in distaste.
	"It's stable?" he asked a medical tech.
	"Yes sir." They'd been analyzing the drugs the chamber was pumping 
into the alien, keeping it alive and sedated while its injuries healed. They thought 
they were some way to understanding how it worked, why it worked and what 
would kill it. At least they'd have bioweapons.
	"How's that sedative coming?"
	The exobiologist at the workstation looked up from the graphics of 
complex molecules. "Steadily sir. We've isolated the substance and should be 
able to synthesize it."
	That'd keep it under control until they got back to home space. He 
moved up to the window and laid his forepaws against the thick material, looking 
down on the alien features in the chamber. "Two legs. Why didn't anyone think 
they'd look so odd."
	The biologist flicked a shrug. "We found the soundest model was based 
on our own biology. There were. . . difficulties with biped projections."
	"Such as?"
	"Well, they kept falling over."
	The commander glanced at him. He didn't think these outsiders had that 
problem. Standing erect, the alien would be taller than an adult male Nedai with 
torso reared, although not nearly as massive. No hide, no fur save the ragged, 
burnt patch on the top of the head. No claws, no tail, four limbs, the lower two of 
which were used for locomotion. And male, they presumed.
	"Get that tranquilizer sorted out, first priority. And learn everything we 
can about it. If it starts waking up, I want it knocked cold as soon as possible."
	The xenotech flagged acknowledgement, but asked, "We can't try 
communicating with it? There might be something. . . "
	"No. We don't know anything about it or its capabilities. Keep it sedated 
until someone more qualified can hook their claws into it. We don't need it 
running through the ventilation system."
	"Shae, sir."
	He regarded the alien features for a while longer. The burns and 
contusions were healing, slowly. It'd take them another week to reach the 
calculated Bridgepoint  and then more days in the terrifying eddies of underspace 
before their own system was reached. They didn't have the facilities to restrain or 
feed an alien. And if it got free. . .  it didn't look that fearsome but he didn't want 
to take chances.
	That was his mission now. Warn people. Get it home in one piece. There 
were a lot of people who'd want to try to talk to it.

------v------


	The dreaming jewel of the world hung in the sun-speckled vastness, the 
arc of blues, whites, and greens filling a quarter of the tinted viewport. The void 
sparkled with motile dots: sunlight flaring as various vessels maneuvered in the 
orbital slots, propellants crystallizing and refracting sunlight. 
	Maeteya never tired of that sight. This rush trip from the moon station 
had been on one of the new courier packets - a windowless can. Cherimainsa 
Highdock's docking ring had been in sunlight so the viewports were shuttered. 
This smeared port on the way to the secure inner rings was the first chance she'd 
had to see the homeworld and she took a moment from her haste to drink it in. 
The light and colors, the sweeping clouds hiding the curl of the Meridian 
Peninsula and the scars created by megatonne strikes during the Meridian Crisis. 
	As the view swung a bit further she could see the distant shipyards 
gantries swim into view and she frowned. There was a godsawful amount of 
activity out there. Local space was crawling with tenders and shuttles and even 
from here she could see flares of plasma torches in the yards.
	"Milady," her escort prompted. "This is a matter of the utmost urgency."
	"Shae," she sighed and headed on up the curve of the passageway into 
the depths of the station, into the secure areas.
	There'd been no clue as to what this was about. She'd been pulled off 
her monitoring and administration duties on the darkside station, put onto a 
packet with the highest priority clearance and a crazy pilot and twelve hours later 
was docking with Cherimainsa Highdock. The reception team had intercepted 
while she was shedding the damned vac suit and barely gave her a chance to 
wrap her uniform harness on before hurrying her into the station. She was only a 
Logister Second Class attached to the farside science team. Her training suited 
her position with the team attached to the darkside array monitoring the skies for 
any outsider signals, but she didn't see how any of that could be so important to 
the powers that they'd haul her up here.
	She wondered whether it might have something to do with the rumors 
she'd been hearing.
	 There were troopers stationed all through the station. In the outer 
sections they were in standard security issue suits, but as she drew nearer the 
Core they were in skirmisher garb: weapons and pressure armor. She was taken 
through three checkpoints at armored pressure-doors where armed guards 
double-checked her documents with retinal and EM scanners. The gravity here 
was about ten percent less than Nedai norm.  Finally she was ushered into a 
neatly appointed vestibule with expensive bark flooring, polished leather resting 
saddles and two security cameras she could see. Her escort told her to wait and 
left her alone.
	Typical. They rush her across half the system and then keep her waiting. 
At least it gave her a chance to groom her travel-ruffled fur into a semblance of 
respectability.
	It was the better part of a half-hour later before the other door opened 
and a male in a polished black harness without insignia stepped in. "Logister 
Maeteya Merasi?" he asked with a glance at a PDA. She looked around the empty 
room and bit back a smart retort but he didn't wait for her to reply. "This way."
	She followed him to another short hall, then through a door and found 
herself in a large chamber. The expensive bark flooring felt good under her paws 
and claws after the utilitarian matting of the rest of the station. Dim recessed 
lights shone out through twisted boughs and branches covering a couple of 
walls and ceiling. Another wall was covered with outsized view screens, all dark. 
The center of the room was taken up by working surfaces arranged in a U and the 
Nedai on the saddles at each station wore harnesses with more silver markings 
than she'd ever seen in her entire career. Her jaw made an audible click as she 
snapped it shut, pulling herself to attention.
	"Logister," a grizzled male with the silver braid of Liaison on his harness 
laid a stylus down on the papers before him. "Come in. Sit."
	There was only one seat left - the saddle in the focus of the crescent. 
She settled into it and looked back at the faces watching her. There were six of 
them. Ranking from the Liaison down as low as a Cluster Commander with her 
mane severely cropped and silver braid polished to a sheen. That would have to 
be the station Commander.
	"Logister," the Liaison said, rolling a stylus in his fingers, "do you have 
any idea why you're here?"
	"No, sir."
	"What do you know?"
	"Sir, I was pulled off my current assignment at Darkside without an 
explanation, bundled into a shuttle without time to pack and brought here on 
priority clearance. Nobody's told me anything."
	"What have you heard?"
	Maeteya looked around at the faces watching her. "Sir, there was an 
incident in the outer system. The Vieshaun was testing a new propulsion system 
and there was some sort of skirmish in the outer belt. The Southerners are 
tensing. So are we." 
	"I see." The Liaison glanced down at his pad and jotted a note, then 
looked back at her and his ears were back. "Logister, what I'm about to divulge is 
classified Most Secret. Tell anyone what happened here and I guarantee you will 
be sent back planetside without a shuttle. You understand?"
	From that tone, they'd do it. "Understood, sir."
	"Logister, the Vieshaun was indeed testing a new system and there was 
a skirmish. However, it wasn't in the outer system. It was in the Dreyal system. 
And it wasn't with Southern forces."
	"The Dreyal system?" she blurted. "I mean, sir. That's  fifteen light-years 
out. They were gone just over a month. You mean. . . we can. . ."
	He looked faintly amused. "Yes. We can. The Vieshaun was testing the 
system and it works. While they were surveying the system there was an 
encounter with another vessel in which the other vessel was destroyed."
	Not southern. . . "Outsiders, sir?"
	He tapped a section of his console with his stylus and one of the 
screens lit up with a schematic of the Dreyal system, colored plots indicating the 
course of two vessels. "The Dreyal system was uninhabited. The Vieshaun 
encountered the other vessel two weeks after they entered the Dreyal system. It 
wasn't Southern. There was an incident and fire was exchanged. The Vieshaun 
was damaged and the outsider destroyed." 
	The screen showed a machine generated image of the alien craft. As the 
image was rotated and zoomed in the scale of it became apparent. It would dwarf 
even Cherimainsa Highdock. Maeteya stared, the enormity of the news not quite 
sinking in.
	"We know they weren't native to that system," the Liaison said. "We 
don't know exactly where they come from, what their capabilities and resources 
are, what their intentions are. That's why we brought you here."
	"Sir?" she asked, puzzled.
	"There was one survivor."
	Her hackles rose. The Liaison was looking at the papers in front of him. 
"According to your file you have a history of medical training, biology, 
theoretical xenobiology, linguistics, ciphers and cryptography."
	"Sir," she acknowledged. "So do a lot people at Darkside."
	"Yes. But you also served in the Sheridin garrison. At a higher rank, I 
note."
	Her head went back fractionally. The memories of that time came back 
with a flood of self-loathing. "Attached to the Counter Intelligence section," the 
Liaison was saying. "'Identifying and neutralizing terrorist activities'. You've also 
got interrogation experience."
	"Yes, sir," she said stiffly.
	"Logister," another high-ranker -  a grizzled male with peppered gray 
muzzle and  the metal braid of a High Marshal – said, "You didn't approve of your 
duties, we know that. You weren't asked to. We aren't asking you to now."
	"Sir," she could feel her fur standing on end. "What exactly do you want 
of me?"
	The officers exchanged glances and it was the Liaison who fielded that. 
"We have one of the aliens. Over the past two months we've been learning to 
communicate with it. It can grasp our language and can speak surprisingly 
intelligibly. We're learning its language and the computers have quite a database 
which helps. It has answered questions readily enough. However, we don't know 
how much - if any - of what it's told us  is the truth."
	The Liaison was watching her intently, his black eyes motionless. "We 
don't know enough about it for lie detectors to read correctly and calibration 
would take years. I'm told there are differences that mean most of our 
pharmaceuticals would be toxic. That really leaves only one way to ask questions 
and make sure it's telling the truth. Physical persuasion."
	She gaped. "You want me to. . . to torture an alien?"
	"Strong word," another muttered, not meeting her eyes.
"Interrogate," the Liaison corrected and lowered his head, his nostrils flaring. 
"Logister, you're the best we can call on in the time available.  You have 
interrogation experience, you are capable with language and you have experience 
that will be invaluable with dealing with a non-Nedai. We don't require you to 
approve of this. What we do require you to understand is that the entire Nedai 
race is at risk here. We have an unknown potential enemy out there. We need to 
know where they are, what their capabilities are, and what their intentions are. 
Every day that passes that we don't have that information our entire species is 
threatened. Billions of lives hinge on this. Billions of Nedai lives. This is one, just 
one. And what it's not telling could kill us all. We have to know. This is not a 
request; it's an order. You understand."
She looked around at the unflinching faces of the upper echelon of her military 
and swallowed. No matter how disagreeable. . . "Yes, sir," she said in a rasping 
whisper.
"You'll follow these orders."
"Shae, sir," she said, her blood roaring in her ears.
He studied her, then flagged approval. "Very good. All the facilities are based on 
the station. You'll be given provided with clearance and everything you need. 
Commander Notaké will brief you with what we know so far. Anything further you 
require, ask. This is classified Most Secret. Any breach of that security will be 
construed as an act of high treason and dealt with accordingly."
He rapped his stylus down with an air of finality. "That will be all."

------v------

	The quarters were extravagant, considering the lack of space on the 
station. Spacious, with natural woods and fibres. They provided foods that would 
have cost a fortune to lift. There was unlimited water and heated dust in the 
showers. Stewards and attendants when she required.
	She was given access to files and archive, encrypted hardware discs and 
cards with dire warnings stenciled on them: data and photos and video footage of 
everything they said was available. She sprawled across the contoured branch at 
the workstation in the cabin she'd been allocated in the secure sectors. The lights 
were down and the hum of life-support was a constant background hum like the 
hiss of life blood. The screen on her terminal flickered with the footage taken from 
a troopers helmet camera.
	. . . the scene colored with the artificial tints of the light amplification 
system. A gloved hand reaching out to swing a hatch open and the picture 
flickering as software compensated for lower light levels. A dark room, the 
viewpoint panning over walls, drifting equipment, occasionally flaring as a small 
light source flickered. Panning over floating debris, then around and up and the 
pale form seemed to leap out and there was a gun in view and a scream over 
audio. Gunfire. The muzzle kicking and rounds impacting in front of the form. . .
	Confused gabbling over com. The figure wasn't moving. The transparent 
panel covering it not even scratched by the gunfire.
	"Gods!" came over audio.
	Hairless, like a cub. That was her first impression. No, not entirely 
hairless: there was a short, asymmetrical mat of growth on the head, more patches 
in the lower groin and under forearms. There were dark patches that had the look 
of bruises about them, more marks that were undoubtedly lacerations.
	There was more vide: footage of the entire module being transported to 
the Vieshaun. The technicians studying it, finding the capsule was a form of self-
contained hospital tending to its inhabitant, keeping it sedated and in a form of 
hibernation. They'd managed to open parts of the machine and found medicines 
and raw materials: drugs, tranquilizers, inhibitors and psychotropics used in the 
suspension. Other drugs were unknown, but just the tech in that device alone 
would bring untold leaps to medical sciences.
	There was footage of when they'd first removed the alien from its 
mechanical womb. The camera focused on the module in the center of the sterile 
chamber as techs went through what they believed to be a revival process. 
Armed guards watched. Doctors murmured in the background as readouts in 
outsider script flashed across the transparent cover. Some time passed before the 
cover quietly slid aside. More time went by before the creature stirred, small, 
uncoordinated movements like a cub waking. It opened its eyes and lay still, then 
vocalized a few small words before a remote mechanical swung over and stabbed 
a needle home. It flinched but the synthesized tranq worked quickly. Biosuited 
specialists entered the room, their hexaped bulk dwarfing the biped that they 
carefully loaded onto a gurney and wheeled away.
She studied the hi-res pictures of the creature along with the preliminary reports. 
Bipedal life form, that was a surprise. Male as well, or something analogous to 
that role: that was a sex organ between its lower limbs, an organ that doubled for 
liquid waste disposal. Relatively thin epidermis of a light brownish hue, dense 
musculature: they theorized its homeworld was warmer and had a slightly higher 
gravity. Internal organs were still being studied but what was immediately 
peculiar was the centralized blood-pump. It didn't seem nearly as effective as a 
Nedai's peristaltic circulatory system.
	"Hit it there," an analyst was saying, "and it's finished."
	Hours and hours of reports and theories. The footage of the early 
interviews with the outsider. It looked terrified, even she could see that, as 
specialists and linguists continually pressed it: asking questions, demanding, 
learning its language and teaching it Netain. The computers had acquired quite an 
extensive vocabulary of the alien tongue and they proved useful. The creature's 
vocal apparatus wasn't entirely up to task of handling a Nedai language and in 
most of the interviews a remote terminal was present, translating and 
supplementing the creature's rudimentary vocabulary. What Netain it could speak 
it pronounced with a North Petayin accent; incongruous in that form.
	An alien. First contact. Intelligent outsiders. She slumped across the 
branch, hooking her claws into the textured bark and breathing the scent of 
natural wood. They hadn't spared any expense in these quarters. Luxury for her; 
payment for what she was about to do.
	Torturing an alien.
	One for five billion.
	She clenched her claws, looking at the alien features on the screen. 
There was memories she didn't want to keep: those months in the Sheridin 
garrison, fighting a war against an enemy that vanished into the populace. When 
they caught one. . .
	 She'd had medical training, she could speak the local dialect. She'd been 
assigned to the garrison intelligence team and had endured a rapid and on the job 
indoctrination into the techniques of interrogation. For five months she'd worked 
on the teams, working CI against an enemy who thought nothing of detonating 
gas bombs in residential areas. There'd been instances when time was of the 
essence and the conventional techniques hadn't been enough; instances when 
it'd been the few for the many
	She'd seen, she'd been part of, things that'd haunt her for the rest of her 
life.
	And now it was coming back to her.
	She had to torture an alien. And this time the safety of her species was 
at stake. The safety of her friends and family and everyone else she'd ever known 
on that beautiful ball of dirt.
	There was so much to do, so much to learn and plan. It was two days 
later before she got her first real look at their guest.

------v------

	"It can't see us," the med tech said. "One way glass."
	Maeteya flagged acknowledgement. The observation room was dark, 
with batteries of equipment ranked against the bulkheads. Cooling fans hummed, 
the recycled air smelled of ozone and plastics, status monitors and lights glowed 
like pinpoints of cold fire. Techs and meds in their saddles were bathed in the 
cold light of displays but most of the light in the room came from the observation 
window in the floor, the huge sheet of armored and laminated plastic.
	The window was the roof of a small room below them: Just a starkly-
illuminated white cube with padded walls and floor. There was a sanitary unit in 
one corner while in the other huddled a small pale form. She cocked her head, 
studying it. Not that there was much to see: it was curled in on itself, forelimbs 
tucked around hindlimbs and head buried. There was no sign of movement.
	"Extraordinary thing, isn't it," murmured a voice beside her. Meteya 
glanced at the speaker: a young male wearing a harness colored medical-white. He 
was on hindfours only, his forehands clasping a PDA board. Clearance passes 
like her own were clipped to the harness showing him to be Shetrim Fenial. She 
recognized the name from the briefings: one of the senior biologists monitoring 
the alien.
	"What's wrong with it?" she asked, going to all sixes to touch the glass.
	"Nothing we can see," he said. "It's been sleeping like that recently. 
We're not sure why."
	She looked at the bright lights and just said, "Huhn."
He glanced at her ID. "You're Logister Merasi?"
	"Shae."
	"I was expecting. . . We were told to expect you, milady. And to give you 
access to the alien and anything you might need."
	"Thank you."
	He looked down at the creature, then back at her. "Ahh, they told me 
what you're to do."
	"Huhn."
	"You really think it's necessary?"
	Maeteya felt her hackles raising again. "'Necessary'," she echoed. "I 
don't know. I wish I did. I suppose if we knew for sure that would make things a 
lot easier for everyone."
	"But Milady, the first emissary of it's kind. . ."
	"But nothing," she cut him off. "You'd place the safety of our entire 
species, of all life on Nedai, on the word of an alien who fired at us?" 
	He was staring at her with wide black eyes, his nostrils flaring, as if she'd 
transformed into a demon in front of his eyes. She looked away and tried not to 
shudder: trying to justify what she was going to do, trying to convince him - and 
herself - that it was necessary. Perhaps she had changed.
	"'Damnation and disaster'," she quoted.	
	He must've studied the classics. Some of the tension went of his posture 
and he flagged understanding and resignation, then looked at the pale figure 
huddled in the cell. "Yes, Milady. Whatever you need."
	"Good. I'm going to have to talk with it. How long does it sleep for?"
	"We can wake it."
	"Do you usually wake it at this time?"
	"Not usually, milady."
	"Then don't disturb it. Nothing out of the ordinary." She didn't want to 
unsettle it. She had to learn about it: how it worked, how it thought and felt, what 
it valued and feared. Reconnaissance. "Now, I have some other matters to attend 
to. I'll return later."
	"Yes, milady."

------v------

	There were a lot of vessels out there. Even from the small port she could 
see a pair of glittering specks moving against the blackness. Considering the 
vastness beyond the spinning steel walls that was a lot to be visible in one place 
at once.
	The desperate buildup. Now she'd seen the shipyard schedules, the 
ships being produced as fast as they could. Everything was being sacrificed in 
the name of haste; the ships being produced were little more than life-support and 
propulsion strapped to weapons launch systems. More resources were being 
poured into the automated missile platforms and the energy satellites that were all 
powerplant and beam systems.
	It was all most secret, from the general populace as well as the Southern 
forces. Of course the Southern intelligence knew something was going on. There 
was no possible way they could have missed the sudden increase in weapons 
and ship production. And doubtless they'd scaled up their production 
accordingly. And doubtless there were frantic talks going on at some level above 
her head. They didn't concern her: she had other things to worry about.
	Right then she was attending to that business in the small but elegantly 
appointed offices of the station Commander with its restful tangles of branches 
and vines.
	"You really require all this?" Commander Notaké didn't look up from the 
digital pad and the scrolling list on it.
	"Shae, sir," Maeteya said.
	The Commander dropped the pad back to the work surface and sighed, 
relaxing in his saddle. "All right. It's going to take some time to get the crews in. 
But you'll have it as soon as possible."
	"Thank you, sir," she said.
	"This is necessary? There are faster ways."
	Her ears went back. "They can cause more harm than good, sir. It can be 
more effective to threaten or promise than actually do. In order to do that I have 
to learn more about it."
	"And that takes time."
	"Unfortunately yes, sir."
	He growled and slowly gouged a talon through the soft pad. "That's 
something we might not have a lot of."
	"I'm aware of that sir. I also know a great deal rests on the accuracy of 
this information. Done properly, we can be reasonably sure as to the veracity. 
Rushed. . . that could be disastrous; ruining the source for any further attempts."
	"Ruining?"
	"Now I might be able to get it in a state of unpreparedness, with its 
guards down. If we try to force information out it will certainly be alerted. And 
force can provide an incentive to resist and reinforce its confidence in its ability 
to resist."
	"That's assuming its anything like us."
	"Yes, sir. And that's why we need this time: to find out if it is anything 
like us, or something so different we need new techniques."
	He tipped his head and studied her, then glanced down at the data pad. 
His forehands rolled the stylus, then tapped it thoughtfully against the screen 
with a sound like insects on glass. "All right," he responded. "Understood. But 
understand this, time is of the utmost importance. Do this thing as fast as you 
deem possible."
	"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

------v------

	
	The saddle in the dimly lit observation room wasn't comfortable. It was 
the usual inelegant conglomeration of plastics and metals that were a hallmark of 
military products, but it was all that was available. Maeteya settled herself on it 
and carefully arranged her notes on the worksurface. Shetrim Fenial had settled 
himself at another station, some of his medical team crewing the flickering 
monitors in the background.
	In the cell below the alien was still in the corner, settled on its haunches 
with its hindlegs drawn up and forelimbs drawn around them. It looked 
disturbingly unresponsive.
	"It's all right?" she asked.
	"Nobody's spoken to it for a day or so, but it ate its meal and all the 
instruments are showing it's stable."
	She growled thoughtfully, checked the readouts on the monitors in front 
of her and then tapped the microphone. "All right," she breathed and looked 
down on the pale figure in the bright room below; gathered her thoughts before 
touching the send stud. "Hello," she said, trying to keep her voice light. "Are you 
listening?"
	The readings on the monitor flickered. Below, the figure stirred and the 
head raised a little. "Do I have a choice?"
	The voice coming through the speakers was a mixture of terms provided 
by a computer translation database and Nedai words spoken the alien itself. 
Those few words were indescribably accented, but comprehensible.
	"I just want to talk to you."
	"Again?" There was an untranslatable sound.  
	"I'm afraid so," she said and looked at the notes in front of her. There 
was a word there, an alien sound that she'd practiced repeatedly until she got it as 
close to the recordings as she could. "Tiron, are you all right?"
	The alien was still for a second, then the matted patch of fur moved as it 
raised its head. Strands of that hung across its face and eyes as it looked up in 
her direction. She knew it couldn't see her through the mirror that was its ceiling, 
but it still made her hackles twitch. "That was almost right," it said after a while.
	"Your name? I got it wrong?"
	 "It's Tyrone." The computers sputtered over a sound pattern that had 
no literal translation. "You're not the usual one. You're new."
	One? There was a team of specialists who'd come through and talked to 
the creature in its box. Of course it wouldn't know that: the computer translator 
was anonymous and used the same intonations no matter who was using it. But 
still - - it'd picked up that she wasn't a regular interviewer. "Why do you say 
that?"
	  There was that noise again, like a cough or a snort. "They never use my 
name."
	Maeteya cut the mike and looked across at Fenial. He looked surprised: 
"It never seemed necessary."
	She chewed on that for a second and toggled the mike again. "I see. 
Tirone. . . Is that better? I just want to talk for a while."
	"That is like the other."
	"I'm sorry. I'd just like to hear a little about you: where you're from, what 
you do. You have a home?"
	"You destroyed it."
	She blinked. "Your vessel? Didn't you have somewhere else? Where did 
you come from?"
	"Come from?"
	"Where were you born? Where did you grow?"
	The head ducked and then leaned back against the padded wall in a way 
no Nedai could possibly duplicate. She could see the eyes were closed. There 
was a pale growth of fur across the lower half of the face: that wasn't in the earlier 
pictures. "Born? [something] station in the [something] system."
	"A station? Born on a station?"
	"Of course," like it was the most normal thing in the universe. "Weren't 
you?"
	She debated not answering that; not letting the subject lead the 
questioning. But it was early, she was still playing it. . . and that bit of information 
seemed innocuous enough. "No. On World.  You think that's unusual?"
	The Outsider hesitated, cocking its head. Perhaps the translator was 
garbling its end of the message, but it said, "Unusual, yes."
	"Why?"
	The eyes blinked. "Planets, not common. Not with life on them."
	"How many others do you know of?"
	Another hesitation. "Two."
	"We are the only other people you've encountered?"
	Once again it hesitated and this time there were noticeable spikes in 
some of the upper frequency audio and imbedded sensor readings before the 
alien said, "Yes."
	Maeteya noted that. "You say it's unusual. You've ever been on a 
planet?"
	"Yes."
	She frowned, then rephrased the question. "A life-bearing world. 
Without a suit. You've been on one of those?"
	"No."
	Interesting, it was being pedantic. "Why not?"
	"Why? Worlds very expensive. Many other places." It shook its head 
and looked up again. "When can I go? Why are you keeping me in here?"
	She couldn't let it take the initiative. "It's temporary, I assure you. How 
many other places. If you don't have worlds, then what?"
	An exhalation of air. "I've said before: stations."
	"You all live on stations?" That seemed rather implausible. "All of you?"
	"Yes."
	She looked at other figures she had, information gathered from other 
sessions with the creature. It'd claimed it's people controlled about a thousand 
systems and that a lot of those were very heavily populated. They all lived on 
stations? It did seems a little implausible, but then she wasn't here to try and dig 
the truth out of it. Not this time.
	"What about your family?"
	Another pause. "Family?" the translator indicated that word wasn't in it's 
lexicon. "I don't know that word."
	So, nobody had talked to it about that subject before. "Your family. Your 
kin. The ones who birthed you. Parents. Any siblings: brothers, sisters, cousins. 
Ones of similar genetic lineage. You do have one?"
	"Family?" the alien looked up at the ceiling again. She almost thought it 
could see her and the expression on its features were unreadable.  "Yes."
	"Shae? Where are they? Where were you born? Your kin home?"
	It seemed to study its long fingers and then its shoulders rose and fell in 
a quick gesture. "My family. Most are on Episedes Gates 15. The [something] 
station there. A lot  run a transport company on innersystem routes. My brother's 
like me I guess. We went our own ways. He works on a [something] hauler from 
outer gas giants."
	"Your own company? Your family owns a stellar transport association?"
	"Yes. It's not one of the largest, but it  has a good name."
	"But you, you don't work for them?"
	A brief plosive exhalation sound came through the speakers. "I had a ... 
falling out with them. I went to work on my own."
	"A miner? That was your own ship?"
	"Yes."
	She exchanged looks with Shetrim Fenial again. Northern space travel 
was controlled by the government and a couple of the largest orbital companies. 
This creature's family ran a stellar transport association while it itself had owned 
that vessel.
	"What was the problem you had with your family?"
	It looked up sharply, it's mouth twisted slightly. "When can I get out of 
here?"
	A sensitive spot? "I'm not sure," she said. "I'm doing everything I can."
	"Can I.... I'm cold. Can I have clothing?"
	"I'll see what can be done," she said. "I'm sorry, Tiron. I have to go."
	"Wait..." it started to say but she cut the microphone and audio and 
watched the alien stand and soundlessly appeal to the ceiling before collapsing 
back into its corner. She sat for a while watching the creature, watching the lines 
on the medical machines slowly calming down.
	"Well?"
	Shetrim Fenial was waiting in the dimness with ears pricked up. "Milady? 
What was the purpose of that?" he asked. "You didn't get anything of value."
	"It's a start," she sagged. "Only a start. Many miles to go."
	'What?"
	"Nothing." She tapped the logout on the terminal and shut down. "Save 
the session data off. I want to review it in private."
	He looked down at the captive, then at her and seemed about to say 
something before apparently thinking better of it. "Yes, Milady," he said with ears 
drooping.

------v------

	Maeteya sat at her desk in her quarters with the lights low and three 
terminal windows up, throwing flickering blue light across the worksurface and 
keyboards. Video recordings of the interview murmured to themselves; audio 
breakdowns of the alien's vocal patterns jagged across the screens; respiration, 
pulse and neural activity were graphed.
	She rewound the video, selected an overhead camera and froze the view 
on a shot of the creature looking up. A weary hiss escaped her as she sagged 
down onto the saddle, then crossed forearms on the desk and laid her head on 
them. Paradise and purgatory but she was tired.
	Many miles to go and a complicated game to play. They only had the 
one toy and if they broke that, there'd be no more. Gently, gently. A step at a time.
	The creature seemed superficially similar to them mentally speaking. 
They'd learned a lot about it. They'd learned it had a family, it had a profit-
oriented social structure and a sense of self-preservation. It knew fear and pain 
and hope. Similar enough that she was sure they could use its emotions against it 
and she was going to be the target of those emotions.
	Two aspects for it to relate to. One it would cling to for support and one 
it would learn to hate and fear. One of those would be played off against the 
other. Hopefully lowering the creature's defenses or giving them a control so 
machines could better tell when it wasn't being entirely truthful. 
	She hoped.
	It was going to be a balancing act that would require timing and subtlety 
and lies. The alien had to be kept off balance and convinced everything was real. 
Pushed too hard and it might break. If the act wasn't carried through with 
conviction it might find the reserves to withstand it, perhaps even realize what 
was going on. 
It certainly wasn't a new technique, but the subject involved meant there'd have 
to be innovations, refinements and care taken. That required time and that was 
something they didn't have.
So she was sitting there in that generic little station cabin with its canned air and 
faint operational sounds transmitted through the metal and wood of the 
bulkheads, organizing something that left a foul taste in her mouth. But she'd 
accepted the duty and understood just what was at stake.
The facilities she'd requested had been completed and the staff were available. 
She'd started on the journey and there was no quitting now. The next step would 
begin in the next shift and she desperately needed sleep.
That didn't come easily. She lay in the web of the sleeping net and stared into the 
darkness listening to the hum of the life support and dreading what the coming 
hours would bring.

------v------

Maeteya'd been in rooms like this one before: dark places hidden behind one-way 
windows. Back then they'd been dingy places with peeling paint and battered 
wooden furniture. This room was constructed of metals and plastics and filled 
with humming machinery and their attendant techs, but it had that same feel - the 
underlying tension, the traces of unspoken guilt. It didn't have the scents of 
stress and fear permeating the walls. Not yet.
The observation room was similar to the one overlooking the holding cell, the 
most obvious difference being the window covering most of one wall. Three 
saddles with their accompanying workstations were lined up in front of it, giving 
Maeteya a clear view of the chamber through the reinforced glass. It also bore 
similarities to the cell: a spartan white padded cube, glaringly lit by medical lights 
overhead. A pair of carts were laid out with implements of various types and the 
harsh light glittered on surgical steel cutting edges and needles.
Maeteya was settled in the saddle, pouring over her notes. A low grating sound 
made her glance over at Shetrim Fenial. He stopped grinding his teeth and looked 
embarrassed. "Sorry."
"Anxious?"
"Shae," he admitted and fiddled with the workslate, trying to look busy. "This .... 
Nobody ever told me I'd have to do this."
"Same," she said without much sympathy and double checked the recorders and 
screens in front of her. Everything was running properly and Fenial was staring at 
her.
"Milady," a tech spoke up. "They're ready."
"Shae," she acknowledged. "Bring it in."
On the other side of the window the hatch was opened and flanked by guards in 
vacuum armor, one carrying a flechett assault shotgun and the other a dart gun 
loaded with tranquilizer. Medics in white clean suits wheeled the gurney in, 
clamped it into place and tilted it forward.
The sedated alien was restrained by straps around its limbs, torso and head. It 
was conscious but lay limp and disoriented, its disturbingly mobile eyes having 
trouble focusing under the bright lights. She saw the eyes flicker from the lights 
to the mirror to the trays and their contents. The bulky black collar containing the 
monitoring sensors and transmitter was very visible, contrasting against its much 
paler hide. When the medical personnel started sticking the silvery mesh of neural 
induction nets onto the alien's limbs and torso the indicators on the medical 
monitors in front of her started rocketing.
	Disoriented and afraid but aware, that was how she wanted it. The drugs 
they'd used were a diluted version of sedatives found in the alien's medical unit; 
they kept it confused and off balance
	When the medics were done they stepped back out of the alien's field of 
view and Maeteya settled the microphone's mouthpiece more comfortably.
	"We've got a few questions to ask you."
	The alien flinched as the voice resounded in the small room. With its 
head restrained it could only move its eyes. "What? What is this?"
	"No. We are asking the questions. You will listen. You will answer. You 
will answer truthfully. Do you understand."
	"Yes. Please, you can't..."
	She touched the stud and the alien convulsed, went rigid with muscles 
and tendons standing out through its pale hide. And it vocalized, a ragged howl 
as the net on its arm stimulated its pain receptors. Its reaction startled her, 
especially the noise. The nets had been tuned to what they thought would 
stimulate its nervous system. The techs had said it wouldn't harm the creature, 
not permanently, and that pulse had been a very low setting. But it was an alien, 
how sure could they be? 
	Just a quick pulse and when she cut it the creature sagged against its 
bonds, its vitals surging wildly while it panted hoarsely.
	"Yes, I can," she said quietly into the mike. "That was just a taste. It can 
get a lot worse. Answer. Truthfully. It will be easier. Do you understand?"
	It made a choked noise that the computer couldn't translate. She didn't 
want to have to use the net again: after that jolt it shouldn't be necessary, but if 
they did it'd have to be turned down.
	"Do you understand?"
	"Yes," it rasped.
	"Good. Why did you come here."
	It told her. It was the same story it'd told before. The details were 
consistent, the instrument readings within comparable bounds to the other 
sessions. But when it was done she asked it again, and then again. And it 
answered, each time it repeated its story and the story remained the same.
	 It insisted that it was a simple prospector, a miner. It wasn't affiliated 
with its government, it didn't know their military disposition or anything about 
their potential.
	"You expect us to believe that?" she hissed.
	"Not lie," it gasped. "Please. Big. Space so big. I only see the police. 
Very small ships. Military ships not come to every system. Military only around 
when needed."
	"They're as powerful as yours? Armed like yours?"
	"My ship just a miner. No big weapons."
	"Then why did you fire at us."
	"I not!"
	There was a surge in the rate of the creature's blood pump when it 
protested that, but there were none of the other spikes that'd accompanied what 
she'd been sure were half-truths. That confused her. Either the creature's 
reactions weren't what she'd supposed them to be or the equipment wasn't 
calibrated properly. After seeing how it'd reacted to what was supposed to be a 
low setting on the net, that was a distinct possibility and a concern.
	"You lie and the pain will be much worse."
	"I not lie!" And its vital signs were wild. She recognized terror when she 
saw it.
	"You can't tell us what you were doing in Dreyal. You fire on our 
exploration vessel. You kill our people. Now you lie to us!"
	"No!" Its pulse was racing wildly and moisture beaded on its hide, 
running in rivulets down its side and face, turning the pale skin slick. "I don't!"
	"And how can we believe that? Your ship had weapons."
	"No. Small ship. Small weapons. Only for defense."
	"Then why did you fire?"
	"I not," it protested frantically. "I sleep. Ship... automated. It defend 
itself if fired on. Machine."
	"Sleep? Why?"
	"Insystem... slow," the alien was struggling desperately for words that 
the translator would know, its pale hide covered in moisture. "Ship was on its way 
out. I sleep. Long sleep. Ship found you, woke me to talk to you. Has to. Rule."
	It closed its eyes against the glare of the lights. "You started firing. You 
killed my ship."
	And all the sensors said it believed it was telling the truth. Terrified, but 
telling the truth.
	The session continued for several more hours. She pushed the alien, 
doubling back on her tracks and returning to questions she already had answers 
for. The answers she received were always consistent, always matching with 
what the alien had said before. Finally she was beginning to feel weary and the 
alien was faltering badly, obviously exhausted.
	"Take it back to holding," she said to the staffers. "Let it rest but don't 
let it sleep. Bright lights, noise, just keep it awake."
	The alien was wheeled out again and she let herself lay limp on the 
saddle, all six limbs dangling. Fenial was watching, the matted fur across his sharp 
muzzle showing he was as tired as she was. "Was that it?" he asked.
	She  stretched, one leg at a time. "For now."
	"That was just the same questions all over again, and the same answers. 
Did we get anything useful out of it?"
	"I think so," she sighed. "We got something out of it anyway. Now, get 
some rest, we'll be starting again in five hours."

------v------

	"You've started." Commander Notaké tapped an extended claw against 
the workslate. "Can you give me a prognosis or is it too soon to tell?"
	The arc of the port behind him was black as only nothing can be, the 
tiny specks visible dwarfed to insignificance. As she watched a tug drifted across 
the foreground: all battered panels and messy strutwork, propellant tanks and a 
rudimentary cage for the crew.
	Maeteya stood at ease before the station Commander, hindquarters 
sitting and forepaws hooked in her harness. "It's difficult to tell, sir. It's being 
cooperative, I think. Its story fits, mostly."
	His ears went up. "Mostly?"
	Maeteya's ears twitched backwards just a fraction. She wasn't entirely 
sure how to broach this subject. "Sir, it's just that... well, there's one particular 
item that doesn't match up."
	"It's lying about something."
	"That's what I'm not sure about. It claims... Sir, it claims that it didn't fire 
at us, that its ship wouldn't fire at us. And as far as I can tell... it believes that's 
true."
	"But you know its not."
	She took a breath, feeling her pulse picking up. "Sir, I'm relying on these 
sessions to try and understand how it thinks, what its reactions are. If I'm not 
given the right information in the first place, this becomes extremely difficult. It 
could even lead to some disastrous misunderstandings."
	"I see," he said levelly. Just watching her, as if evaluating.
	"Sir, what really happened? Who fired first?"
	He snorted and wrinkled his muzzle. "I thought you'd ask that 
eventually. They didn't give you enough credit. Well, Logister," he said in stead 
tones, "you can imagine how highly classified this information is, but the truth is 
that technically, we fired first. There was a misunderstanding. It looks like our 
computers fired at theirs."
	Maeteya closed her eyes for a second and hissed softly. So this was 
why the upper echelons were so anxious and desperate to know all they could 
about their enemy and their capabilities. The things they knew for certain were 
that the aliens were warlike enough to go armed, and they had a reason to go to 
war with Nedai. Oh, piss. Oh, gods! What had they blundered into?
	"Exactly," the Commander seemed to wilt a little. He must've seen the 
look on her face and she didn't harbor much doubt that he felt the same way: the 
realization that they were balancing the future of their people on the tip of a pin. 
"So you see why this must be classified. Not a trace of it can leak. If we're 
fortunate, nobody will ever know what happened out there. Just an accident. 
They do have them, we know that."
	If what the alien had told them contained a grain of truth, that was true. 
They had accidents. Ships were lost. And it would eventually be counted 
amongst them with no-one the wiser.
	Except the crew of the Vieshaun, the upper ranks of Nedai military, 
herself and, oh yes, the alien. Who she now knew would certainly never be 
returning to his own kind.

------v------

	It knew that room now. The alien cried out when they brought it back in. 
The monitors showed its blood pump start hammering and it strained against the 
restraints. They held.
	Maeteya watched it through the one-way windows until it gave up and 
slumped against the straps. It's chest was heaving, moisture beading its hide and 
she could see its limbs trembling. As a child living in the outskirts of Lye and 
Cinder city she'd dreamed of stars and other lifeforms. As she'd grown she'd 
studied in fields that'd made her friends and associates look upon her as a bit 
eroded around the edges. A lifetime of dedication working toward reaching those 
shimmering specks in the night sky. Now those stars were here, strapped to a 
table, and terrified of her.
	Oh, gods. How did it ever come to this?  She clenched fists, her claws 
slipping from fingertips to prick at her palms, then took a deep breath and opened 
the comm.
	"You claim you were mining in the Dreyal system."
	The alien exhaled, a desperate sound. "I tell you. I tell you many times."
	"Answer me or..."
	"Yes. Yes I mining."
	"And you were alone. So that was automated, like the rest of your 
vessel."
	Its eyes rolled closed for a second. "Yes."
	"Your machines were reliable? They didn't break?"
	"No. No."	
	"Then why did they fire at us?"
	"No!" It coughed something in its own language that the machines 
didn't translate. "Not shoot!"
	"A laser - Light at 105gigahertz  - was fired at us. We defended 
ourselves."
	"What? Not understand numbers."
	That took a while: converting their system to a frequency the alien 
recognised. "No!" It protested. "Not weapon! Communication. For talking!"
	"To whom? We found no-one! It was a weapon."
	"No. I... " the medical readings lurched again as muscles twitched and its 
eyes searched, as if looking for a way out."
	"Go on," she prodded.
	It swallowed and sighed, a remarkably normal sound. "There are mines. 
Two."
	"Two mines? How many of your kind there?"
	"None. Machines only. Ship would signal mine. Regular update."
	"Why didn't they answer our signals."
	A sigh. "Still... small. Machines still building mines. Main computers and 
signal facilities not working yet."
	She remembered the technical information the creature had already 
surrendered. The mines were automated devices. Robotic packages were dropped 
on target areas and they'd automatically construct the necessary facilities. 
"They're fully automated," she said and the alien didn't respond. "They recorded 
the message, didn't they? Didn't they?!"
	"Yes."
	"Where are they? How long until your kind finds them?"
	"I don't know. System... moves. This much time... I can't say."
	"You must have schedules, routes, some idea. Where's your nearest 
colony? How long before Dreyal is visited again?"
	"No. I don't know. I don't know!"
	She took a deep breath and then touched the key again.
	The neural nets had been adjusted, but the sounds through the speakers 
were still horrible. She asked the questions again and again, trying to get 
locations or schedules or maps, but either it was a superlative liar or it really didn't 
know.  All she was able to get was that there were two automated mines in the 
Dreyal system. Tucked away on a pair of nickel-iron asteroids in the vastness of 
the debris belt. It didn't know the location, it claimed. Planetary drift and orbital 
mechanics were beyond its ability to calculate in its head, which she found 
somewhat relieving. But its professed ignorance... she was sure it was hiding 
something, but there was no proof. All she was able to get out of it was a 
frequency that those machines would respond to.
	That session lasted over six hours. By that time she was tired but the 
alien was a shivering mess, its head hanging and the fur there matted and wet. It 
barely moved as the medics took it away.
	Fenial was looking ill. "You all right?" she asked.
	"Shae. Just... this is... I never thought it would be like this." He shrugged 
his forequarters, obviously uncomfortable under her level stare. "At least we got 
something."
	She gestured assent. In the background techs were already trying to 
work out possible locations from maps of the Dreyal system. "Something," she 
sighed.
	"Milady?"
	Maeteya shook her head. "No, nothing. Now, we can let it rest for a 
while and get the rest of those drugs out of its system, then I'm going to need 
you up in the monitoring room."
	"There's more?"
	"Shae. But this should be... easier."
	He didn't look entirely convinced, but he took his workslate and said, 
"Yes, milady."
	
------v------

	An entire squad with weapons ranging from tranquilizer guns to 
automatic shotguns guarded the hallway and hatch. The sergeant had received 
his orders to let her pass but still checked her pass and retina patterns.
	"You're sure you want to be alone, Logister?" he asked carefully.
	"Quite sure," Maeteya responded while he checked the access entries, 
looking from her face to the picture on the monitor.
	"Shae," he acknowledged and handed her pass back. "If there're any 
difficulties, we'll be right outside."
	"Thank you, sergeant." She picked up the small bundle again and set off 
down the narrow metal hallway.
	The hatch was metal and ceramic, reinforced and locked and a lot heavier 
than it needed to be. Hydraulics hissed as the sergeant keyed the entry, then the 
metal panel slid aside and she stepped inside.
	Bright lights shone down, glaring off the white padded walls. She 
couldn't resist an upward glance: the figures in the observation room were 
invisible behind the mirrored window. All she could see was a birds view of the 
room, looking down on the whiteness and herself and the pale figure huddled in 
the far corner. A distinctly acrid scent permeated the room: a mixture of the alien 
biology's cooling system and fear.
	Metal clanked behind her as the door closed and the alien didn't move. 
She could see the bumps of vertebrae under the light brown hide of its back, the 
muscle of its buttock and shoulders, strands of dark fur escaping from where its 
head was tucked down. She could see some lurid marks on its hide. Bruises. It 
looked like the medics hadn't been too gentle when moving it.
	"Tirone?" she ventured and the hidden speakers mimicked the name.
	Muscles under that skin flinched, then froze, then flexed as it moved and 
turned. Eyes that were white around brown regarded her from behind a tangled 
fringe. It was afraid, she could tell that. "Tirone?" she said again, quietly. "Hello."
	It... he backed up as far as he could, trying to press back into the corner. 
"No more," the computer translated. "No more."
	"No," she said. "I'm not... No, not that. Listen, I'm sorry. For what 
they've done to you, I'm sorry."
	Just an alien stare.
	"Please, here." She held out the bundle, then fumbled with it. "For you. 
It's just a blanket but I thought you might need it. I mean... you look cold..." She 
dropped the blanket and nudged it forward then sank to her haunches, lowering 
herself before the alien.
	A hand reached out, faltered, and then snatched the blanket. She just 
watched and wondered if the drugs were still clouding its thinking. That could be 
advantageous.
	He returned the stare, just clutching a corner of the blanket.
	Finally: "You... you're the one? That new one?"
	So. Observant enough. "Shae. I talked to you before. You said you were 
cold. I thought that might help."
	He pulled the white blanket around his shoulders, wrapping it around 
like a shroud. He was moving stiffly, she saw. Slowly, as if in pain. He huddled in 
the corner, watching her warily.
	"I'm sorry," she said at last. "I didn't want this to happen."
	"Then stop it."
	She cocked her head and let her ears droop. "I want to. They don't listen 
to me."
"Why're you doing this to me? I don't know anything!"
	Maeteya sighed. "They don't know that. They don't know what you 
know. And hiding things from them... that can make it worse."
	"I not!" he moaned.
	"I heard... " she began. "I heard you didn't tell them about the mines. Not 
until now."
	His head dropped down into his arms, hiding his face in folds of white. 
"Why?" she asked softly. "Tirone?"
	"It was all I had left."
	"I don't understand."
	"No." His head tipped back against the white padding, eyes closed. 
There was moisture leaking from them. "I thought... I could use them to get new 
ship." He stirred and looked at her. "You're not going to let me go, are you."
	Her hackles rose and muscles bunched as she tensed, getting ready to 
defend herself if the need arose. "I don't know," she told him quite honestly. "I'd 
like to."
	"But they don't listen to you," he closed his eyes again, sinking back, 
and she relaxed a little.
	"I'm sorry. When your kind meet mine, maybe there can be an 
arrangement."
"How long?"
She let her ears droop in a shrug. "I think you have a better idea of that than we 
do."
A choked barking sound. "I don't know where I am. I don't even know how long 
I've been here."
"But your people, they must be nearby. There must be someone following you."
His head moved slightly and she could see the faint glimmer of an eye beneath an 
eyelid. Mentally she cursed herself. Exhausted or not, the alien was still wary and 
she hastened to find some way to smooth the wrinkle. "Don't they care about 
you? What about your family?"
Now his head lolled and he opened his eyes to stare at her, studying her from 
forequarters to haunches. "They will search. For a while. This is the frontier. 
Sometimes ships go out, they don't come back."
"Why didn't you tell someone where you were going?"
"Who?" the shoulders rose and fell and his face contorted for a second with a 
hiss of breath. "Refineries don't care. And I don't know where I go. Things always 
change. I go wherever looks best."
"Alone? You enjoy that?"
The eyes closed again. "Yes."
"How long are you out there? You don't feel... alone?"
The mouth twitched. "Not so long. Two months maybe." He cracked an eye and 
lolled his head to regard her again. "You have miners?"
"Yes. Like you. I think they have to be a little odd. All that time in small ships."
His mouth twitched again. "What's your name?" he asked. 
	"Mine?" For a split breath she was off balance and mentally scratched 
herself. It could be risky, to let the subject take the initiative. But this wasn't an 
aggressive interrogation. This was simply ingratiating herself to the subject, 
building a trust. And already it'd let slip a couple of interesting items. "Mine," she 
blinked. "I'm Maeteya."
	"Maeteya," he echoed. "Maeteya, why're you here?"
	"They want me to look after you. To make sure you're all right."
	This she could see wrinkles creasing his face as he squeezed his eyes 
shut. "All right? They... hurt me. It... that hurt... Why are they doing that?"
	"They're trying to find the truth."
	"I say truth!"
	"I know," she assured him. "I know. But they don't."
	He moaned something the computer didn't pick up and buried his head 
again. "Is it over?"
	It was barely beginning. Her silence must've told him what he didn't want 
to hear. She could see the trembling in his limbs. "I can't go back there. Don't take 
me back there."
	"I'm not," she hastened to assure him. "I'm not. Just rest now. Just rest."
	He buried his head again and she felt a pang of concern. Were they 
being too intensive for the first sessions? They didn't want to drive it too hard 
too early. Pushing it into psychosis was the last thing she wanted, and looking at 
the shivering figure huddled in the corner that seemed disturbingly close.
	"Tirone?" she ventured and carefully reached out a forehand. His hand 
flinched when she touched it, patted it. The textures under her finger pads were... 
quite like nothing she'd felt before. "It's all right. Understand?"
	"Maeteya," the speakers rumbled. Not the alien but the PA from the 
observation booth. "Your time's up. Out of there, now."
	"I..."
	"Now!"
	A final pat. "Just rest," she said and carefully back away to where the 
guards were unsealing the hatch. Last she saw before the metal slid shut was a 
bundle of cloth, frightened pale eyes watching her. When the door was sealed 
she leaned against a bulkhead and took a deep, shuddering breath.

------v------