Song Of Silence

by Maerlyn of Miria

In the 24th century, humanity has expanded to inhabit multiple galaxies, but a threat approaches from an unexpected direction, combined with the threat they've been dealing with for decades, and a darkness from before the dawn of time intends total universal destruction. The tower trembles. The rose shudders as if in the grip of the final winter. Rule Discordia!

2. Chapter 2: The First Invasion

Sayeh took a breath, pursed her lips, and let out a complex, eerily birdlike trill before she grabbed Clarissa's hand and hauled her out of the room. Nahia, Sareela, Kodonera, Lillian and Daren were right behind her, and Bane followed shortly, Maerlyn and Feliz hot on his heels.

"If I see a single one of you so much as look at another with ill intentions I'll feed you to the Frnalk. Now come on," Sayeh said, and sprinted across the docking bay.

"Does that include any of us looking at Castor with ill intentions?" Maerlyn asked.

"No," Sayeh responded.

"Good," Maerlyn said, "because I have a few ill intentions to look at him with next time I see him."

Sayeh saw Kkhlyyr entering her ship, flanked by a fearsome-looking escort. Kkhlyyr turned and beckoned to her but Sayeh said, "If you don't mind, I'm going to take Justyce. I have things to pick up."

Kkhlyyr paused in liquid conference with her companions, and then she said, "So be it. Just remember that we can see the inside of your ship."

"Don't worry about it," and Sayeh absently added a sound that might have been a word, filled with fricatives and odd trilling sounds. There was a little stir over by Kkhlyyr's ship, but Sayeh had pulled the others into Justyce at this point, leading them up to her control room and locking the blast door behind them.

"We're getting Feather, Ulekkin, Winter Storm, Mojo and Lucianum. It doesn't make sense to get a gunship, because we don't have a crew for it, not until we get more people. Later I'm going to get Billy, Ray, Malcum, Caiden, Maria, and probably more. But I can only take a few of you in there right now. Things are damned tense, thanks to Castor's little incident."

"Do you think Maria will be able to come?" Feliz asked. "and, what the fucking Hell happened in there? It was almost as if Maria was shot too."

"I don't know," Sayeh said quietly. "and on second thought I don't think that Kkhlyyr wanted her to come."

"why not?" Maerlyn asked. "If anybody's trustworthy, she is."

"Because her mind is delicate," Sayeh said. 'I think that Kkhlyyr's afraid of it fracturing."

"You do know something, don't you?" Maerlyn asked. "Don't treat us like we're kids, Sayeh. Maria's my sister, and I along with caiden have to protect her. What about her do you know that I don't?"

"I don't know anything for sure," Sayeh said. "accept that she is a kloremra, and please, don't ask me about that now. It would take far too long to explain. As to why Kkhlyyr didn't want her to come, that's to do with the sallenian war, and you can't protect her from her own past."

As she spoke she launched and went to Empanda. Sareela took the controls as Sayeh, Feliz and Maerlyn docked their ships, including Maerlyn's Asteroid Hauler, Tilianum and Feliz's Asteroid Hauler, Holly. Clarissa wondered for a moment what they were doing docking non-combat ships in Sayeh's Battle Cruiser, but then figured that if they had enough time, Feliz and Maerlyn would probably make certain bard was flowing, so to speak, to the rearm centers. Sayeh strode back into the control room and jumped from 15 to 35. There was Kkhlyyr with her escort, and Sayeh waited until they landed and a crackling, metallic voice came over her speaker and said, "Access granted. Justyce, you may land." She moved to the station, docked, and stood up.

"Simon, Feliz and Maerlyn," she said. "Come with me. Everyone get out of the CR, but stay in the ship." When they started to open their mouths to respond, she asked, "Do you want to lose space to the Frnalk? I didn't think so."

They vacated the control room and Sayeh strode out of the ship. Simon thought it was a wonder that thunderheads didn't materialize around her. She looked like the messenger of Death come to take you away, eyes cold, face set, body ramrod-straight. Maerlyn's face was totally devoid of expression, but Simon knew well that there was definitely something going on in the man's head. every single bit of information he either was given or obtained in any way while he was in this state was committed to memory and stored there for life. Trryhlin met Sayeh on the docking bay. It looked like a normal docking bay, but there was an odd, translucent airlock that irised open as they approached it.

"I am going to introduce you to someone," Trryhlin said. "He is verbally called Ehnnorai Lyyrrekkhin. He is ancient, even for one of his variety. With age came power, and ..." He turned his head back in a nearly birdlike motion. "He will explain."

They moved through dimly lit tunnels into the heart of the station. Eventually they came into an open room, the only place with high ceilings that Sayeh, Simon, Feliz, and Maerlyn had seen yet. They could breathe a little easier here than in the ambient chemical metal smell of the place. It wasn't the normal chemical metal smell of a new station. Rather it had a silvery-dark bitter tang to it that was slightly unnerving and impossible to place, and the metal smell was more similar to corroded batteries. Vents in the ceiling fanned cool air into the room, human Galactic standard, which the four humanoids appreciated.

There was a Praelor at the end of the room, sitting in a depression on a platform that was raised slightly above the rest of the space. When the creature stood up and advanced toward them, Sayeh couldn't help but to watch in amazement as he approached. He was the biggest Praelor she'd ever seen in terms of solid power. Kkhlyyr would be much smaller if she weren't pregnant, but all of this being's mass was its own. He could look Sayeh directly in the eye, in fact he was taller, whereas Kkhlyyr was just a bit shorter. He could probably even pick her up, if balance allowed. He too had a receiver/ttransmitter jewel, a big sapphire-colored thing inset in the same place Kkhlyyr's was. The two paused in liquid conference and then he turned to the three humans.

"Your renegade, Castor Hemlock, has aggravated already stressed tensions," he said. You didn't have to ask. You knew that this was Ehnorrai.

"We know," said Simon. "They are a small splinter group, called Unorderly. Their actions embarrass us greatly."

"Organizations, orgs, hold more weight among the common humans of the galaxy than the alliances," said Sayeh. "It's complicated political crap."

"Not very complicated," Maerlyn said, "to put it simply, after the original High Guard Command space station in sector 24 went into the Static's black hole and the Ontanka linked a jumpgate to said black hole, High Guard relocated to Roluxica in Sector 12 and did what it could to rebuild itself, paying very little attention to what was going on anywhere else in the galaxy. First the org known as Force made a bid for power that brought about a war that lasted for almost a year, and then Unorderly stepped in after Force was driven back."

"Clearly, you possess the ability to explain situations in such a way that even an outside observer can understand, even if I find some of your terms to be beyond logic," said Trryhlin.

"I am with my alliance," Sayeh said sadly, "but not with many of the people of it. Castor Hemlock was AIE before he switched to Hale. It is shameful."

"That explains much," said Ehnorrai.

Trryhlin left them with him, presumably to go find Kkhlyyr. She had been severely wounded in the skirmish on Pax, and could lose some, if not all, of her children.

"How are you going to respond to this?" Sayeh asked.

"They are renegades," Ehnorrai said. "It is now up to the governments of all three alliances, as this group consisted of members of all three, whether they will be punished under human law or both."

"Tensions are high, even within individual alliances, due to the org wars," Sayeh said. "And there aren't real governments. There haven't been for years."

"The Shadowblades are after every Azhaani in the galaxy," Simon said. "You can't be part of this without aggravating said tensions, Sayeh."

"Not all the Shadowblades," Maerlyn contributed, "sen isn't involved in Estuan, Rachel's and Ryok's activities. neither are Maria and Caiden. As for Brandon, he's hardly ever in locals and he isn't exactly up to speed on what some of his family are doing. one could say that the Shadowblades are equally divided where the current situation is concerned."

"Are these more of your orgs?" Ehnorrai asked.

"No," Sayeh replied, "they're families. Family disputes are separate from org or alliance disputes, but all three can affect one another. In fact, I was once Talavera, before I took, how would you call it?, my own network and became Azhaani, not that I was the first. Cianan has that particular honor. And the head of the Talavera family betrayed him," here she indicated Maerlyn, "shortly after she became a Shadowblade. We were once very close. Maerlyn became an Azhaani, becoming what you'd call part of my network, shedding the Kristos name as his former attachment to the family who adopted him after he graduated Academy, all of whom are dead now thanks to the Org Wars, caused him pain. And he was found to be related to the Azhaanis in any case. So," she spread her hands, "yeah, it's complicated. You're right, Simon, I can't be part of this."

"This presents a problem," said Ehnorrai. "You have spent time among us. Very few have. Simon, will the fact that your name is associated with the Azhaani endanger your involvement in this? And Maerlyn, will your direct connection with the azhaani endanger you as well?"

"Probably," said Simon.

Maerlyn nodded slightly.

"May I be blunt and ask you to take that chance? Surely they realize that humanity and its allies' survival is at stake?"

"They're not reasonable, well, not the ones that really hate me," said Sayeh. "If Parias and Matt talk to them, maybe."

"Powerful members of your race?"

"Yes," said Sayeh.

"Pirates, more like," said Simon.

"Pirates govern your race?" Ehnorrai asked. Was that shock in the emotionless voice, beautifully synthesized though it was?

Sayeh sighed. "Simon says things quickly."

"But it's the truth," Simon returned.

"They're not exactly pirates," Maerlyn said, "Parias only gets hold of people's ships when someone else gives him a key, and the only reason he targetted some of my ships was he had a problem with my sister Nicolette. matt's more of a tirant in waiting. But the two of them could swing a bit of weight where Ryok and the others are concerned. It's not exactly as if he has much use for them. Caiden and maria he respects, more like fears, at least where Caiden is concerned, same with sen. he's liable to get Ryok and Estuan to control themselves long enough to make sure we survive this particular up-coming snafu."

"Snafu?" curiosity in the voice now.

"Situation normal, all fucked up," Maerlyn answered, "an old Earth expression among their military."

"That's not the point," Sayeh said, "I don't intend to lie to anyone. But to put a complicated situation in such black and white terms will help nothing."

"Changing the way that you present such a state of affairs does not change the actual situation," said Ehnorrai. "It only avoids the real problem."

Sayeh sighed. "I suppose you have a point. And we do have a problem, whether anyone is willing to admit it or not. We weren't intending to tell you much, because, well, paranoia, plain and simple. Humans learn paranoia early. Looking through every door before you step through, locking every door and hatch you can lock, learning what to say or not to say to who, flying and gunning faster than your potential enemies, moving quickly and invisibly. Every race probably has its equivalent. Humans are masters of paranoia."

"In this galaxy the way it is now, it's necessary," Maerlyn said, "people like Ryok and Castor make such things necessary. unfortunately we were too shocked by Castor's sudden appearance back there to stop his assassination attempt."

"Can't dispute that," said Ehnorrai.

"Why is it Kkhlyyr said we needed to see you?"

"Because I have discovered a new technique. As we understand, it was mentioned to you that we can create jumpgates, but in a fashion very different from the manner in which you do it. We have also ... done something else. I will only ever ask you to keep one secret from your people, and this is only for the sake of safety."

"What do you mean?" Simon asked.

"We can't make such a promise with no knowledge of what we're keeping secret," Sayeh said.

Ehnorrai looked at them for a long moment, head cocked as if he were listening to something. Simon glanced questioningly at Sayeh.

"I hear no ill intent, but ..." Again he hesitated.

"Ehnorrai," said Simon, "whatever it is, Kkhlyyr wanted us to know."

"There is a being that can naturally fold space," he said, "one creature whose power alone can span the space between hundreds of thousands of lightyears, whose farsight is feared by other races, whose sheer contained energy is such that if they are destroyed without the proper process, anything within three units of space of it will be destroyed. But its kind has only been sent into your space once. If you were to go inside, there is a room that contains a massive structure of living crystal that, until the moment of its death, glows so brightly that no known race can look directly on it without retinal damage. The structure is so hot that if you were to touch it, your skin, and most of the flesh on whichever limb came into contact with the crystal, would melt off. And that is only the surface of it; inside there is so much more energy."

Sayeh, Simon, Feliz, and Maerlyn were very, very still, holding their breaths as if any sound could break what Ehnorrai was saying.

"As cold and practical and emotionless as time, some have been known to say that they see everything. This, however, is far from true. I would know ... because, in a sense, I am one, or as closely linked to one as a being can be, through physical links implanted in my mind centuries ago."

"Centuries," breathed Sayeh. "How old are you?"

"Older than I have cared to count," he said, "and older than I would want to convert to human time. But there is one thing.

"Humans already know this. You have witnessed one in action, creating, with its own life-force and indirectly with the power of the Static, our way into your space."

"Are you ..."" Simon began.

'I think he's talking about the particular type of Praelor ship that created the ontanka jumpgate in 24," Maerlyn said, as if thinking out loud, "right after the Static created the black hole and destroyed High Guard Command."

"But we have done something else," said Ehnorrai. "We can temporarily slow down and manipulate Time. The process is incredibly complicated, and it is not something we would be willing to explain anyway."

"Slow down ... Time?" Simon breathed.

"Now," said Ehnorrai, fixing Sayeh with one depthless eye and Simon with the other, somehow managing to also include Maerlyn and Feliz, "do you see why it is incredibly unwise to inform your race of this power?"

"Yes, but ... why are you telling us?" Sayeh asked.

"Kkhlyyr has her reasons. She has heard our destruction in some humans' minds. If you four know, you can help us, without anyone else knowing how or why, save both races."

"Doesn't that mean you are going to die soon, or just your ship?" said Simon.

"If my ship dies, I will die, and yes, it does."

"You say that so ... carelessly," said Sayeh quietly.

"We're all going to die eventually, some way or other. Dying for a purpose isn't a bad thing, Sayeh, if it's something you consider worth dying for."

"I don't know, maybe it's easier to say for someone who's lived centuries, but ... our lives are so short. We hold on to them."

"Lives are tiny little precious things," said Simon.

"My life is no longer tiny," said Ehnorrai. "In fact, yours aren't, either. I was never sure anyone's lives really were tiny."

"So, what is our place in this?" Sayeh asked.

"You will know when we are moving time. Perhaps we will set up an encrypted communications channel with your ship," he said. "Kkhlyyr has not finalized the plans. We still do not know what is going to happen. She has brought in nine of us, but moving time could create unsolvable paradoxes."

"You're telling me. Every old Earth sci fi series, anyone?" Simon muttered.

Sayeh sighed. "You and your old sci fi."

"How he managed to view any of it is beyond me," Maerlyn said, "as the entire store of the old 2d film discs went into the black hole when High Guard Command in 24 was destroyed."

"We're going to send you back to your ship. You're going to leave and ... Sayeh. Use discretion. It will take more than four humans to help us, but this is the most powerful secret any race has ever held."

Sayeh could feel the weight of it in her mind. If anyone figured out that she knew the Krenelia's secret ... Ryok Shadowblade and his unreasonable, childish hate would be the least of her problems. He'd lied to her and about her solely so he'd have an excuse to hurt someone. Other parties would actually have a valid reason to attack her, which made what they might do to her even worse.

She looked at Simon. She was scared, all of a sudden, like a little child who has suddenly woken up in a strange, dark place and discovered that their bright illusory childhood is gone, like when a good dream very suddenly turns bad, like when you realize that everything, everything, is wrong ...

It is cold, out here in the trackless dark, she thought, clinging to a thoughtscape she'd once been shown when she had visited the Krenelia, after the last Great Convention of Races (which humans had never been made aware of). No one can see you. No one will know if you die. And no one will mourn you. It is the emptiest place, where beings lose their spirits to its cruel grasp. It is silent, out here in the dark. For days I have heard no thought but my own, sensing no transmission except those of the ship, informing me of its surroundings and functions.

Ehnorrai turned both piercing dark eyes on her. "Do not lose hope, Sayeh," he said, damn near gently. "While there is still life, we will resist."

Ironic for you to say, she thought, but said nothing.

Trryhlin appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, taking in the situation with his unreadable, black-on-black faceted eyes. "You have told them," he said.

"I have," said Ehnorrai.

Trryhlin did not respond. Simon, Feliz, Maerlyn, and Sayeh followed him from the room and back to the docking bay. They exchanged their farewells, and Trryhlin stood back, watching the four humans enter the massive ship. Moments later, it lifted off and streaked into the blackness of space, illuminated by the firing of its thrusters as it left the station's artificial gravity.

There was silence as the roar of Sayeh's battle cruiser's launch dissipated into the eternal night surrounding the station. Nothing moved for a moment, as if time were suspended.

And maybe, for a moment, it was.

But maybe it would make no difference.

Sayeh sat in her trusty little expediter, Feather, drumming her fingers on one of the consoles. Simon stood behind her, his hands resting on the back of her chair. Sareela was stretched out on her couch, and Lillian was pacing. Diminutive, delicate and dark of skin, eyes and hair, Nahia sat with her legs folded daintily beneath her on the edge of the bed, immediately beside Feliz, who was currently feeding Alaura from a bowl of what appeared to be some sort of baby version of hotdogs and beans, which the child was merilly dribbling all over herself. Maerlyn paced between the control room and the airlock, as if on security detail. Sayeh used to sleep in her expediter when she didn't want anyone to find her, hence the bed and the rest of the furniture which made the ship look, more than anything else, like a flying one-room apartment.

"Lillian," said Nahia quietly, "would you sit down? And you too, Maerlyn?"

"It's all Uncle Cianan's fault!" Alaura exclaimed, whilst at the same time giving Feliz a look that said, "Ha ha, I made a mess all over myself, the bed, and the carpetting in Aunt Sayeh's ship, and there's nothing you can do about it other than get out a baby wipe and clean me up. The dumb balls that float in these ships'll clean up what I dribbled on the floor, if I don't kick them, or it, if there's only one, first."

Nahia was even smaller and slighter of figure than Sayeh, but she was a full-blooded human. Standing at only three-ten, she had perfect olive skin, delicate, slanted features and liquid dark, almond-shaped eyes. She was very gentle and quiet. She was the sort of person that made you ache to pick her up and protect her, because there wasn't a single mean bone in her body. She couldn't hurt anything, and for that reason alone, Ryok was targeting her too, because she literally couldn't fight back. If she hurt or killed something, she would feel its pain, even if it was her mortal enemy. But she had a brilliant mind.

Lillian sat down next to Nahia. Lillian Azhaani was about five-nine, with a pale complexion, grey eyes, a long nose and a mobile face. Her long, pale blond hair framed her face in the only tamed curls Sayeh had ever seen.

"Look," she said, fixing her pale blue eyes on Sayeh, "what Ehnorrai told you, how is it our business, and how is it his right to endanger us?"

"He's not. He's asking us to disregard the short-term consequences so that the long-term consequences favor survival. As he said: cold and practical and emotionless as time. He's a purely logical living mind. He means no harm, but he has no firsthand understanding of emotions ... probably none of pain, either."

He? From what she was coming to understand, he was probably literally an "it," neither gender. Calling someone an "it" was derogatory in human society, and was probably the same for Praelor too. They must have a separate signal for it.

Sayeh slumped in her chair. "I can't do this, you guys," she said faintly. "I have to watch my back because of Ryok and Estuan. They're like Praelor themselves sometimes, like the bad kind. Maybe they're distant cousins." She laughed half-heartedly. She rubbed her forehead. She could feel a headache coming on. "I wish I could believe differently about them. I wish they were different. Guilt over having to hate them, and over being unable to avoid the whole situation that started the feud, which was a completely stupid one, to which everyone, including me, reacted childishly, is still riding on my shoulders. I have to make a name for the Azhaani too, making us strong without making us evil. I have to smooth over everyone's damned disagreements and misunderstandings since the Krenelia came back, and now we're keeping their biggest secret. At least I have Simon and you guys to help me with some of that. And look at me complaining! Someone else could handle this so much better. ..." Her voice trailed away, and then she said softly, on a resigned breath, "I have failed everyone."

"It's because you have no anchor, feather," said Sareela. Sareela had always called her feather. "You need one."

"I need someone who could match my power with his or her power," she said. "Someone I could click with, someone that would be as strong as me without controlling me, someone who'd tell me I was doing something idiotic and who could stand with me and absorb the crap that I can't. We would be two parts of one, balancing each other out." She shook her head. "I'm high maintenance. I'm better off alone."

"You're just not entirely human," said Nahia.

"You told us when you were uncovering your genetic memories," said Lillian. "The anchoring rite is pure sexual energy, and if he can't match what you can give off, then he can't be your anchor. And then it all depends if you click."

"Clicking comes first," she said. She shook her head. "I don't know the inhuman woman that lives in me. You could use the same description for her that old Earth pagans used for the Goddess, maiden, mother, warrior and crone. And lover, too, add that. But she isn't a goddess. And she and I won't understand each other until we: one, get that we're the same person and two, know where we came from, and what we are. I. So on top of that whole mess, I have no anchor, which makes me less able to handle it, and I don't even know what I am. I'm not trying to complain, guys, I'm just confused and tired as hell."

"Hey, feather, it's OK," said Sareela. "We're all entitled to a bitch session when things get to us."

"I know, I just feel shitty for loading my problems off on you," Sayeh said wearily.

"Quit it," said Lillian. "Now. We love you, and we don't mind if you vent."

"Thanks, Lill," Sayeh said.

Lily-Marie stirred in her cradle, opened her big, whiteless blue eyes, and started crying.

"Oh, no!" Sayeh said. "Look, I'm projecting now. Poor Lily." She scooped up her adopted daughter, rocking her gently. The little girl buried her face in Sayeh's blouse and clung to the fabric with tiny, surprisingly strong hands.

She could climb walls, her little fingers and toes were so sensitive and strong. It was a little scary sometimes. She'd get pissed off at someone, leap up a wall, sit on a shelf and hiss at anyone who tried to get her down. You had to let her get over it unless you knew you could get her down without falling. Sayeh joked about being driven up walls and dancing on ceilings to keep up with Lily, whose nonhuman blood was even more evident than her mother's.

"I got myself into this mess."

"I got you into the Shadowblade mess," Sareela said.

"No. Ryok just likes to hurt people for fun or something. He's a bit of a sadist. It's only fun to him when someone's in pain. You just happened to be the one he picked to play with, and you are Azhaani. We hold each other together." She extended her arms and they all held on to each other for a moment, feeling the closeness of their mutual connection to Sayeh, and through that, their connection to one another. Sayeh was a natural Nexus. She drew strong connections and formed strong foundations, if you gave her the time.

"But I did everything I could to be what I felt this galaxy needed. I sacrificed everything for the sake of connections, and I could have been just like a lot of people, and lived my own life. If I hadn't tried so hard to hold things up, then I wouldn't be one of those being relied on now. I asked for it. I better take that responsibility, then."

"Sayeh, you alone can't be the glue that holds this connection together," said Simon. "We used to tell you that you couldn't be a heart for the whole world. It's the same thing."

Sayeh rubbed her tired eyes. "I guess. I've got to figure out this anchor shit, guys. The nonhuman in me physically needs an anchor and will sicken without one. My human blood can only be a defense against the effects for so long." She stopped. "I wonder if Kkhlyyr would let me tell her. Her situation is more similar."

"We don't know that."

"You saw how she and Trryhlin were linked. You don't have to be able to hear connection resonances to know that."

"Connection resonances" were what sensitives called bonds they could sense between people.

"Look, it could be totally different. And let's not bug Kkhlyyr."

"If she hears it, she'll bring it up. So you have a point."

"She and Maria were linked, too," Feliz said, bringing the point up again. "In fact, Maria seemed linked into all of them. When Kkhlyyr was shot, I would swear that Maria felt it. And, there was that silent communication between Maria and Trryhlin."

"I know," Sayeh said quietly. "that's why it's different. I will never need a kloremra."

"What the Hell is a kloremra?" Maerlyn asked.

The flight control scanners worn by all of them beeped simultaneously. "This is flight control in Rolukksica, we detect shots fired! Repeat, shots fired!"

"What the christing fuck?" Maerlyn inquired, staring at nobody in particular, "what fool's shooting in 12?"

"Shit!" said Sayeh, hands flying over the controls. "I've got to activate a communications link here so that they'll give Feather docking access, ..."

"Sayeh," Maerlyn said, "Feather's in Justyce's docking bay. Why would you need to get docking access for your expy when it's inside a ship that already has docking access?"

"It doesn't matter which ship you try to land here, Sayeh. Docking access for your ships is tuned to your biorhythm," said Simon. "Ship picks it up and transmits it. Calm down." Simon sat down on the couch beside Sareela, who scooted herself into a sitting position for him. "We don't have to go, Sayeh."

"What's wrong up there?" Feliz asked.

"Nothing, yet," Maerlyn replied, "apart from some idiot with too much weaponry at their disposal and not enough brain cells in their heads exercising their fingers on firing controls for no remotely understandable reason."

Maria and Caiden had entered Vindico Atrum almost immediately before Sayeh and the rest of her family had entered Justyce and jumped to sector 35. caiden had tended to Maria, said tending consisting of making her a strong cup of coffee and dropping an herbal remedy known only to Selenians into it. From that point, the two of them had settled down to wait. They both knew that soon they would need to choose an asteroid processing station and start hauling, but for now, Maria needed to heal thanks to the shock induced by Caster's attempt to kill Kkhlyyr, and also that her original plan to spend a bit of time in prayer had to be put on hold, apart from the prayers she offered up from Vindico Atrum's control room.

They had almost made their minds up to launch, land on Empanda, and switch from Vindico Atrum to Maria's Asteroid Hauler, Hard Rock Summer, when Caiden noticed movement on the display screen that showed the input from the ship's external camera. Janice Kuolena, Jingo Hoezee, Mortimer Webber, James Hemlock, Levi Cohen, and Lauren Jensen were gathered on Pax Neutral's docking bay, their droids and drones following. Ordinarily, caiden wouldn't have given this a second thought, as beyond the "no stunning" areas of Pax Neutral, it was entirely possible to get stunned and kidnapped at any time, but the way the group was standing close, heads together as if discussing some sort of secret endeavor, made Caiden's alarm bells go off at top volume, and when that happened, experience had taught him that it was a good idea to listen.

"Now what are those six up to?" he asked.

Maria glanced at the display screen.

"I don't know and I don't like it," she answered.

"Neither do I," Caiden said, "I'd almost think they were planning something. That could mean no more than a simple kidnapping at turret point or it could mean something else altogether. Piracy springs immediately to mind."

"You don't think they'd try something like that with things the way they are now?" Maria inquired.

"Most of them I know," Caiden replied, "and most of them I don't trust. Piracy at a time like this certainly wouldn't be beyond any of them. This new one, this Kuolena, is an unknown quantity. I've not encountered her enough to know what her agenda is, or if she even has one, but since she's huddled with the rest of them, it can't mean anything good."

"But she fought on our side when that pilot drew a turret," Maria protested, "and again when Caster and the rest barged their way in and tried to assassinate Kkhlyyr."

"Ever hear of the double bluff?" caiden inquired, "I think that's what she's doing. get us trusting her whilst she carries out her real plans."

"You've got to be one of the most suspicious people I've ever met," Maria said with a smile, "but in this case, I don't like what's going on out there any more than you do."

"And I think something should be done about it before things out there go too far," Caiden said.

"Almost everyone's back on Empanda, darling," Maria said as she moved to exit the control room and take up position in the engineering room, "we won't get much of a crew here."

"Perhaps not," Caiden replied as he stood, put his arms around Maria, and aided her in moving to her position, "but that's what private comms links are for."

Caiden helped Maria into her engineer's chair, buckled her in, softly kissed her, made certain that there was a cup of coffee near to hand, returned to the control room after checking one last time to make sure everything in the engineering room was to Maria's liking, raised his communicator to his lips, and sent a series of private coms. at the same time, he launched and flew, on rel drive, to Empanda, where he landed and unlocked the main hatch. No more than two minutes later, sen, Brandon, Natalie and Jason west, Daniel and Michelle Quaide, Jason Brooks, and Amena Michaelmann, Feliz's sister, had entered the ship, after which, caiden locked the hatch and launched. Almost immediately, his sensors informed him of a launch from Pax Neutral. His scan of the newly launched vessel informed him that it, a Destroyer, was manned by all of the members of the group he had seen on Pax's docking bay. He waited until the ship jumped out of the sector and utilized the wormhole tracer to see just where they thought they were going.

"Sector 12," he said coldly to nobody in particular, "now what the hell do they want there?"

After a quick series of transmissions over the ship's PA system to make certain everyone in the ship was where they were supposed to be, Maria in the engineering room and the other eight in weapon rooms, he programmed in an FTL jump and subwarped to one unit of Roluxika. Almost immediately, the destroyer subwarped to a landing vector and disappeared from Vindico Atrum's scanners. But something else immediately caught Caiden's attention. A Transverser, caster Hemlock's, launched from the moon's surface and began maneuvering to battle position.

"Watch out!" Caiden called over the Pa, "Transverser! If it looks like they're even thinking about wavewarping, we're getting out of here."

The wavewarp drive, a component built into Transversers, the second available class of AIE specialty starship, along with giving the ship a boost in line of sight Navi-aided travel, had an unlooked for and unpleasant side effect. Any ship in the path of a wavewarping Transverser had a nasty habit of suffering crippling damage or outright destruction. some pilots had utilized wavewarp drives as weapons against Praelor ships, but others had used them as weapons against other human-occupied ships, and in such a situation, the systems that usually governed the successful launching of escape pods were jammed, insuring the deaths of everyone aboard the affected ship if destruction resulted rather than severe damage. This fact had led some pilots to the belief that Alexander Voltrace had somehow managed to duplicate wavewarp energy on a small scale and project it in some form of tight beam at any ship he chose to attack, disrupting the escape systems as he had done to a freighter, a Battle cruiser, two Fighters, and a three-person cruiser years ago and more recently to several ships of varying classes, causing the deaths of a great many enemies of Force. This supposition, however, was far from provable, as Voltrace had remained in hiding until very recently, and once he had reappeared, his Battle Cruiser, Challenger, which had originally been seized by High Guard following his trial, but had vanished shortly thereafter, only to reappear at around the time all the Force trouble had started a year ago, was once again on the "missing" list. Thanks to that, no official or unofficial investigation could be launched into what exactly he had built into the ship to give him that rather deadly ability.

Caiden checked the occupancy scanner and saw that the Tranny, as some pilots called the ships, was manned by the selfsame crew as the destroyer, minus one.

"Lock and load," caiden called over the Pa as he sighted in with the longrange laser.

The cannons and lasers in all eight weapon rooms of Vindico Atrum fired and the Transverser shuddered as it suffered multiple hits, but the weapons in the targeted ship returned fire and Vindico Atrum shuddered in its own turn. Immediately, the sounds of repair drones carrying out repairs to the affected parts of the ship joined the sounds of the engines and weapons. Maria had immediately spotted the damage and had set to work in the engineering room.

The Tranny exchanged fire with the Battle cruiser for a short time, the two ships cutting across the sector and back again like a couple in a lethal dance of flame, but then the Tranny broke off and engaged its Wavewarp drive.

"Hold on!" Caiden shouted into the PA, expecting at any moment to feel the hull of Vindico Atrum buckling under the bombardment of unknown energy that caused the wavewarp phenomenon, but the ship remained whole and suffered no damage. at the same time, the Tranny materialized in orbit around Roluxika and affected a successful landing.

"Now what the hell ...?" caiden began, but a moment later, his flight control scanner informed him as to exactly what the Tranny's sudden breakoff of hostilities had meant. the ship had been a distraction. The unaccounted for person from the destroyer's original crew had carried out the task for which he or she had been brought to Roluxika. The Transverser's presence in sector 12 had been no more than a distraction to keep anyone else from landing on the moon and getting in the way.

"Damn!" Caiden cried, "we failed, epically!"

Aboard Feather, flight control scanners beeped all around. "This is flight control in Rolukksica, transmitting an emergency broadcast! A prisoner by the name of Castor Hemlock has escaped from confinement in the High Guard holding facility with the aid of Janice Kuolena, Jingo Hoezee, Mortimer Webber, James Hemlock, Levi Cohen, and Lauren Jensen. Every able-bodied pilot is commanded by High Guard to shoot or capture any of these individuals on sight."

"Shit!" Maerlyn cried, "how the fucking hell'd they manage that!? And what the fucking hell is Kuolena doing!?"

"Looks like we found out just how far we could trust her," Sareela said under her breath."

"Captain Azhaani of the ten-person battle cruiser Justyce, Mother Kkhlyyr-a'Tani na-Lhyyreght Trrghlinh is requesting your presence."

"That can't be good," said Sayeh, getting up. "It's a formal summons. Guys, stay here."

They let her go. Her elegant grey cat leapt from the bed and followed her from the room. She still absently held Lily-Marie, who stared around with huge, dark eyes.

"Precious, come back!" Sareela called after the cat.

Kodonera wandered into Justyce's docking bay, scooped up Precious, and brought her back into the expediter. "Guys, what's going on?" she asked. The others took turns filling in events for her.

Kodonera looked out after the diminishing form of Sayeh. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," said Nahia, "but Sayeh is going to break. I can tell."

"And if she breaks, what happens to the Azhaani?" Sareela asked.

"We continue," said Kodonera. "We need Sayeh, but our very existence doesn't depend on her. We need her, but she needs us, too."

"She needs an anchor, Nera," said Sareela. "And we can't find her one. She has to revert."

That had been something the Azhaani had refused to talk about. If she found her race, she could revert, and she would be okay. But ... they would lose her.

Trryhlin met Sayeh and led her silently through the maze of the station to a low-ceilinged, dimly-lit room. Sayeh's head nearly brushed the ceiling, so the only other person who could have gone in with her would have been the diminutive empath, Nahia.

Kkhlyyr was curled up on a slightly-raised platform laid with living mats. The word rehtaef came into Sayeh's mind. But it wasn't a plant they'd gotten from one of their own worlds; they'd adapted it somehow so it would grow in an environment other than its planet of origin, a planet more than half a universe away, a planet called Miria, after which Maerlyn had named his Expediter. Kkhlyyr looked up at Sayeh, and her eyes were too dim and clouded for Sayeh's peace of mind. "Sayeh-ia, why is it you did not tell me that you were in phase?"

"In phase?" Sayeh asked, mystified.

"What is it you say ... Nexus, Nexi. That will suffice. A Nexus in phase is ready to choose a consort. I assume you have none."

"You ... but ... wait."

"This will complicate matters, Sayeh," said Kkhlyyr.

"But what do you mean?" Sayeh asked plaintively.

"You really don't know, do you, child?"

Sayeh had a sudden sinking feeling that she knew what Kkhlyyr might mean. "Can you ... explain? Please?"

"A Nexus is the center of a living network. You have minds on yours; you have added them, your brothers and sisters, and even your close friends. Your consort, or consorts, will be on that network as well. And one day, so will your children."

"But that wasn't my world."

"I know that one of my people once told you that we knew who made you."

"Yes?"

"There is a reason he said that."

"Then I can't have an anchor, it's not possible," Sayeh blurted. She must have been in shock, because the implications of what Kkhlyyr was saying hadn't settled in yet.

"Sayeh," Kkhlyyr said quietly, pitching her "voice" just so that it cut through the barrier in the diminutive woman's mind. "Listen to me."

"But ..."

"Sayeh. Sit down and listen to me."

Sayeh sat down beside Kkhlyyr, curling her legs beneath her, her body as taut as a bowstring.

"What was done is done. No one knew the ramifications would be as bad as they were. No one could have guessed what happened. And when we sent you back, back to the people we knew you belonged with, we certainly thought we were doing the right thing. But perhaps Liani was wrong. Even she is not infallible."

They all had such unshakable faith in Liani that Sayeh found that hard to believe.

"We thought your human blood would spare you from the effects of being a ... Nexus, especially of phase, while leaving the telepathy intact. We should have known that even we can't, what is the human phrase, play God. Now, if you choose a human anchor, it is likely that the energy you put off bonding him could ... have unforeseen, disastrous consequences. I do not believe that any human could handle it, which leaves a possibly unsolvable problem."

Kkhlyyr's words had finally gotten through the barrier of shock in Sayeh's mind, and the full consequences became clear to her. "I'll lose Justyce," she said. "I'll lose ... my people. Both of my peoples. Kkhlyyr, I'm going to lose ... everything. Oh God." She pressed her hands over her eyes and whispered, "I'm going to die, aren't I?" She couldn't grasp the scope of it yet. "If I lose Justyce over this, everyone will know, and they will shun me ... but, Kkhlyyr, I've never done a single mean thing unless I was pushed to it. Like the Shadowblade shit. They forced me to do what I continue to do, was

"That's where you're wrong, Sayeh," Kkhlyyr said. "You don't have to respond at all. You see, I have often defined my strength as an unconventional kind of strength. To put it in human terms, when the smoke clears, I will still be there, damaged, but alive and healing nonetheless. Humans have done many horrible things to my people, and to me. Yet we continue to prove our strength to every enemy we may have. We will still be quietly here when many others are gone. And we need not destroy anyone to prove it."

Sayeh thought about this for a moment, and said: "You mean I should completely ignore the Shadowblades?"

"No, Sayeh ... but do not respond to their violence with a force you consider great enough to destroy them. That is not why we are all here, is it? That is hucknity's mistake, the mistake of many galactic races and factions thereof."

"The Shadowblades are the least of my problems now, though," Sayeh said.

"You have some time, Sayeh-ia, months, perhaps."

She shook her head. "They'll figure it out. Surely they know already. And they'd never believe me."

Kkhlyyr turned her intense, fathomless eyes fully on Sayeh, each facet focused in the girl's direction. "Are you going to let High Guard, and the unfortunate situation and mind-set of humanity, make your future? Or are you going to make it yourself? You are a Nexus, Sayeh! You are made to be strong and to prevail, to be a source of energy, a wellspring of life. It would be a shame if you gave in this easily, not to mention a waste of effort on the part of an uncountable number of people. Also, my kloremra is in your care, and I am depending on you to protect her mind from the disconnection the enemy will bring."

Kkhlyyr let her words impact Sayeh, and then continued more gently. "We can still manage, even if you are in phase. Ehnorrai says he can filter any contact with you, and Ehnorrai is immune to a Nexus' phases, so if he can do it, we will continue."

"We just end up hiding more and more," Sayeh said. "It can't end well."

"No," said Kkhlyyr, "it can't. ... But perhaps we can do what we need to do before they figure it out, which means you will be in their favor, Sayeh. I don't want you to lose your people, either of them. I don't want you to die, either, or become High Guard's experiment. If it is necessary, we can pull you out. But we need both races to survive, and the Frnalk are intent on seeing us fail."

"And Maria?" Sayeh asked. "Why can't you pull her out?"

"She's a warrior in her heart. She will fight the Frnalk with all the strength she has, though she will kill no one. However, we will remove both her and Caiden if it becomes necessary. I will need her after this birth."

"I know," said Sayeh, understanding. "I figured that because you were pregnant that the rite has not been completed."

"when we met, I was pregnant, but I will change after this birth, and the rite, begun then will be completed."

"If she lives," Sayeh said softly.

"She will live," Kkhlyyr spoke firmly and decisively. "and part of that responsibility is yours."

Sayeh sighed. "I'll be quiet," she said.

"Oh, Sayeh," said Kkhlyyr, and she looked away. "I am so sorry, child ..." Her eyes flickered back to the entrance, where Trryhlin was still quietly waiting. There was almost pain in the emotionless voice when she said, "Trryhlin. Take her back to her ship now." She shifted her bulk slightly, turning away and turning her eyes inward.

Sayeh stood up. Trryhlin beckoned silently and led her from the room.

He looked back at her as they walked through the station's heart. "This is taking more of a toll on Kkhlyyr than she will show."

"I can tell," she said. "I can ..." She made the beginnings of an angular signal absent-mindedly, then looked at her narrow, long-fingered, delicate hands in puzzlement.

"The sense-sign for Nexus," Trryhlin said. "Interesting. You are already listening."

"What do you ..."

"We have a collective subconscious, therefore everyone has access to all memories and thoughts. Humans have it, but we have bridged the gap between conscious and subconscious, and you have not. It is a matter of fine mental control. Perhaps you will learn it one day, but not with the way you let your subconscious run chaotic and undisciplined."

"Which we, they, we? lack," Sayeh said, giving up.

"You will gain access to its techniques, especially with the consummation of your connection," he said.

"How do you know I'll be ... connected?"

"Because you must be. You will choose, because you will have to. It will force you into full phase. You should choose well, he is going to be your anchor, for life. And do not let the lust choose for you, like the weak Ontanka Nexi do."

She shook her head. It was all still too much to take in.

"Trryhlin, what will happen to Kkhlyyr?"

"We will attempt to save her daughter. The rest have less than a thirty per cent chance of survival."

"And Maria?" Sayeh asked. "I know the rite between her and Kkhlyyr wasn't completed, but it must have been completed between her and the males, between her and you. Is Maria all right?"

"For now," he said. "If the rite had been completed, the trouble would be greater. As it is, she will recover."

"Oh Gods," she said. "I'm so sorry about the children."

"You did nothing wrong," said Trryhlin. "You have nothing to appologize for. It is Castor who must pay the debt, and he was, until recently, in High Guard custody. As for the children, there will be more through the kloremra once the rite is complete."

"What will you make him do, or do to him? Castor, I mean."

"We will have to modify the rules according to the circumstances, and Ehnorrai has already sent a message back to Liani. She will give us permission to do so soon."

"On top of this whole Frnalk mess." Sayeh rubbed her tired eyes. "I could sleep for a year."

"There is still much to do before the invasion."

"I know. I won't sleep, as much as I want to."

They reached the docking bay. Sayeh waved to Trryhlin and went into her battle cruiser. It probably wouldn't be hers for much longer, so she would make the best use she could of it for what time she had left as its captain.

She found Nahia standing outside Feather with Lillian, Sareela, Kodonera and Clarissa. Simon, Daren, Maerlyn, Feliz, and Bane were there, too.

"Something's wrong," Bane said automatically. "You don't get that look on your face often."

He may be a total spaz, Sayeh thought, but he knows me. And that bothered her a little more than she liked to admit.

She told them in a toneless voice the summary of her conversation with Kkhlyyr.

There was total silence, and then Sareela ran forward and hugged Sayeh close. The smaller woman could feel moisture in her hair, and she reached up to wipe Sareela's tears away.

"Oh, Sayeh, it's OK," Sareela said, as her other sisters came to hug her too. "Look, you're my sister, no matter what you are." Sareela kissed her cheek. "And we all love you."

Feliz put an arm around Sayeh next.

"I may not be an Azhaani by blood," she said, "but you've got me behind you all the way too."

Maerlyn came wading into the group, reached over everyone's heads and gave them all a hug. Laughter broke out because he was so much taller than everyone else that he sent them off-balance. He smiled for a moment and then aided everyone in keeping their feet before gently kissing Sayeh's cheek.

"Thanks, guys," Sayeh said, her vision blurring with tears.

They stood up and dusted themselves off. "Now off to Outpost 58 we go," said Sayeh.

"Why?" someone asked indignantly.

"They're going to need a hell of a lot of extra materials," Sayeh replied, "ISC is probably going into a mad overload. What else can we do but work?"

"And even if the other elements in the asteroids don't help anyone in this situation," Maerlyn said, "we'll definitely need cardenium and bard. hell with gold and stuff right now."

Everyone, with the exception of Maerlyn and Feliz, who entered in silence, activating their forcefield spacesuits (Maerlyn's generator resembling a dimbly glowing azure sphere and Feliz's resembling a small gold necklace with a single diamond set into it) and checking their asteroid hauling kits to make sure they had a full stock of equipment, went into the expediter grumbling about there not even being excitement in war. They hadn't seen shit yet, Sayeh thought. She should get Trryhlin to tell them stories; then they'd want the safety of the boring routine of their lives back. And she could imagine that he had stories that would impress hardened veteran pilots, if there was ever a time when there was no war, no Frnalk, no Ontanka, nothing threatening their lives.

Or perhaps, she thought with a shudder as the nightmare vision from the conference room recurred to her mind, Maria should tell them stories. On second thought, she doubted that Maria would ever talk about that mindless screaming horror, and Sayeh couldn't blame her.

There had been nothing but war for more than three decades (the Alexander Voltrace affair coming near the beginning of this latest string of conflicts,) and neither side had gained ground until the Sector 15 invasion of 2355, when the Ontanka had destroyed Miriani. Yet they had still been driven back. And humans had never advanced far into Praelor space, for the Praelor empire was vast compared to the small amount of space humans clung to so desperately. The CTN empire had been huge as well, but it had been almost completely wiped out by the static and the Praelor had moved in on its remnants and were still establishing territories that the rogue former human alliance had once held. Other races had spread their influence to the chaotic, isolated worlds the CTN had left behind, and the galaxy was in a state of upheaval due to the sudden rise and fall of human empires in the midst of tens, perhaps hundreds, of races whose relations with one another were already fragile or unstable, if not completely deteriorated.

The group landed and changed ships, returning to Sayeh's Battle cruiser and launching, beginning the journey out of the charted sectors toward the remote outposts, Maerlyn keeping an eye on longrange scans just in case someone (Caster Hemlock sprang immediately to mind) decided to follow them out and start shooting, probably with an Intercepter in the sector equipped with interdicters to make certain the target ship didn't escape.

When the Battle Cruiser landed on Remote Outpost 58, everyone, with only a couple exceptions, exited the ship and entered various 2-person Asteroid Haulers. Maerlyn entered Tilianum together with lillian and launched (Feliz was currently hauling together with her sister in law Sonya in her own ship, Holly,) immediately beginning the complicated manual navigation sequence that would, hopefully, finish them up near an asteroid. Other Roiders were also flying, each in different directions. It wasn't about the credits now, although most of the time cash was the main objective of hauling. now it was about survival.

Hours later Malcum Hamilton, a longtime close friend of Sayeh's, found her on her battle cruiser where it was landed at 58, pacing in the control room, since Sareela and Kodonera were hauling in Sky Diamond, her asteroid hauler. He noted an odd sort of glow to her eyes, a light that was almost as if she'd captured a star in her gaze and the glow of it was going to spill out across her skin.

"I was wondering where you'd gotten to." She sat down suddenly, for a moment looking intently at him with her head cocked like a little bird. "I needed to tell you ..." she began, and she filled him in.

"Whoa," Malcum said, and sat down beside her. "That's ..." He spread his hands. "Completely ridiculous. No, no, I don't mean you, I mean ..." He shook his head. "Well damn."

She sighed. "But what she told me means that ... I'm going to die."

"You don't know that you can't have a human anchor," he said.

"Erm," she said, attempting to stop a thought before it blossomed into traumatizing imagery, "I can't have ... any anchor."

"Oh God," he said. She shot him a look. He cracked up. "What, I couldn't help it." And then he sighed. "But seriously, Sayeh. It might sound odd, but I know more than a few people who wouldn't find it hard to imagine being your anchor."

"Oh, God," she said. "As long as you don't start naming people, we might be fine."

He laughed. "Most of them aren't too scary."

"Coming from you, that means a good sixty percent of them are."

"Oh, hey, come on now!" he said. "That's not fair." And both of them laughed.

"Sayeh," he said seriously but gently, "I could be your anchor. I will take that risk for you."

"But I can't ... I'll condemn you." Her eyes stung. "As it is, once everyone knows, no Azhaani will ever walk free again. And if they do, someone like Matt Valentino or Parias Atriedes will order them shot on sight. I've condemned my entire family, I can't, won't, do that to anyone else. If I live, my conscience will be my burden forever."

"Sayeh," he said, and he reached out and took her face in his hands. "Listen to me."

But suddenly her eyes flared with light and the glow spilled out across her skin, down her face and neck, across her shoulders and further downward, until you could almost believe that she really was glowing. Something passed from her to Malcum, a wave of something that wrapped itself around him like living light, sweeping through his body and then retreating like ocean waves. He stared at her, eyes wide, trying to catch his breath. Slowly, reluctantly, he let her face go, and the energy that flowed through him dissipated.

"My God," he breathed.

"I don't even know everything about it." She shook her head. "I'll have to ask Kkhlyyr about it."

Malcum noticed that the glow hadn't completely faded; her skin almost seemed to shine, bringing out suggestions and hints of colors in it that he'd never noticed. And her skin was so soft, perfectly smooth, like silk under his hands. He almost reached out without thinking, just to touch her again. Clearly the, whatever it was, the energy, that she'd sent surging through him hadn't faded.

"You should do that," he said, his voice still a little rough. "That was ..." There was no word for what that was. Intense didn't quite cover it somehow. Sayeh wondered whether it, she, would respond that way to anyone, so that she was forced to try and choose, or just to some people. Earlier, when everyone was having an emotion fest, this electric reaction didn't happen. Maybe whatever influence being around Kkhlyyr had on her took time to settle in.

Sayeh stood up. "I have to be doing something. I'm so restless. I'm not used to being ..." She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"Stuck," Malcum said quietly, "between a rock and a hard place."

"Exactly."

The blast door whooshed aside to admit Morpheus Azhaani, flushed and out of breath with his hair on end. "Sayeh, come here," he said.

"What is it?" Sayeh inquired.

"Just come with me. Hurry! I'll take Ulekkin, you take Winter Storm. Bzzr in 15. Didn't you have your flight control scanners turned on?"

"Oh shit," said Malcum, and stood up. "Let's just use the bC so I can get my fighter too. And Morphius, it'd be a bit more logical to dock whatever fighter you're going to take in this ship rather than trying to fly it back to 31. Fighters don't have FTL drives, so you'd arrive in 15 at about the time everyone was landing after getting rid of the invading ships."

"Wait for the asteroid haulers to dock!" said Sayeh.

"There's no need. Everyone's landed, just open up and let them in," said Morpheus.

Glancing out quickly to see who was on the docking bay, Sayeh unlocked the hatch and called over the loudspeaker, "Enter." She turned to Morpheus. "Why random Bzzr's? Why not a Potate, a few Onzes and Onati, a few Ontanka and possibly a Muzati? 15's a rather important sector. This isn't right. like Maerlyn pointed out, there's an asteroid mining station there as well as Empanda. you'd think they'd hit it harder than this."

"Apparently they've decided to have a fight, over space that's been colonized for decades, that isn't even theirs. Looks like we're going to have more than a few factions fighting each other and us," Morphius said.

"Dammit!" Maerlyn exclaimed as he entered the ship, "have the Ontanka gone insane or something?"

"What if these aren't Ontanka?" feliz asked, "what if they're Frnalk ships?"
"The Frnalk would probably send something bigger than a swarm of bzzr's to attack 15," Maerlyn said, "it's a logical target and they'd hit it as hard as they possibly could. This doesn't fit any type of logical pattern. Something's not right."

Everyone was in, so Sayeh sat down, buckled, and began launch procedures. "Hold on to your butts!" she called over the PA, and initiated the jump back to 15.

"Flight control in Angelus, 60 Praelor starships inbound!"

"Flight control in Varoshna, fifty Praelor starships inbound!"

"Flight control in Casus, Oh shit, they're here ...!" And the flight control operator's voice was cut off by a loud scream, which ended abruptly.

"They attacked flight control!" Malcum said as the jump completed and the curious distortion of subwarp took them across the sector toward Empanda Station, Bzzr's scattering like tiny fish in the wake of a great ship.

"Which means they're going to hit the station. And we get to listen to them die," said Sayeh. Her blood ran cold. She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

"The same thing happened last year when they invaded Sector 26," Maerlyn said, "but a couple FC operators survived and were able to keep those of us who weren't in the first response wave abreast of events. But this time ..."

The ship had touched down on the public docking bay by this point, and people were piling out, turrets drawn out of long habit. Ships were expelled from Justyce's docking bay, each one resembling a metallic bird whose wings were folded. When the little ships were put on red alert status, however, the wings spread, revealing two laser turrets at each wing's tip. Everyone was getting in fighters, weather said fighter had been expelled from another ship or hauled to the docking bay. There appeared to be at least fifty of the tiny bird-like craft. . Sayeh went into Winter Storm, the interior and exterior of which were all silver and black, harsh planes and angles with nothing to soften it. There was a single piece of furniture, a black captain's chair standing before the cramped consoles whose lights flickered off the silver-and-black interior. She felt the gentle bump of the little ship being lifted and set in Empanda's docking bay, and then the pressure of liftoff.

The fighters flew in a tight formation their pilots had practiced for situations somewhat like this, but most times said situations consisted of what they called "Bzzr missions." The formation in question allowed the fighters to keep close together and prevent themselves from being boxed in and swarmed by the Bzzr's, the ships usually remaining a unit apart, whilst allowing for a field of fire that would keep the numbers of swarming young Praelor starships down.

As soon as Sayeh was in the air, the general sector communications channel exploded with sound.

"Look, are you people out of your minds ...?"

"We can't just ..."

"First the fiasco on Pax, now this ..."

"They're trying to help us, you worthless fuck ..."

"Watch that one, it's ...!"

An explosion as a starship was destroyed.

"Watch your fucking lock you asshole ...!"

"I'm gonna strand your ...!"

"I have a stun gun with your name on it ..."

And someone's gentle, plaintive voice: "Can't that wait for another time?"

The computer interjected, "Praelor Onati 1489 has jumped into the sector." Sayeh scanned it, realized it was Krenelia, and then took another look at the Bzzr's. Some of them were the Praelor they were used to fighting, but a lot more were little Krenelia ships. One floated nearby, its components nearly completely gone. It was beginning to repair its hull damage. Suddenly a voice in Sayeh's ear said, "Momentarily switching to human communications frequencies." Sayeh jumped and reached up, feeling the implant behind her ear and suddenly realizing that it must have many purposes besides controlling the micro-organisms regulating the PH of her blood.

General sector exploded again with noise, the little blinded one floating above Winter Storm was sending out some sort of distress sound, for instance, and Sayeh wished she hadn't heard it. That high, hissing whistle of pain and anguish was imprinted in her mind forever, and would haunt her dreams with eerie echoes. Then a low frequency emanated from the Onati floating at the edge of the sector, and though Sayeh was the only human, or semi-human, who could hear it, everyone else could feel it.

"What in the ...?"

Sayeh held down the tab for general sector next to the microphone on the communications console beside her. "They've switched the band to our communication frequency for a minute," she said.

On her ship's scanners, she saw Lucianum break formation and head for the dying Krenelia Bzzr. Before it could be hit again, Lucianum's lasers fired at the Ontanka ships surrounding it, causing them to break off their attack.

Maerlyn saw the crippled Krenelia Bzzr, saw the Ontanka ships about to surround it and finish it off, and came to a snap decision. Since they were fighting the Ontanka ships anyway, why not show them that just because the Krenelia were here too, it was no reason to utilize what was clearly swarm strategy to pick off the young, although what the Ontanka were doing sending Bzzr's into 15 was beyond him. Come to that, it was totally beyond him why the Krenelia had sent Bzzr's of their own into 15 in response to the ontanka activity in the sector. They were young Praelor starships, not even mature, and certainly not battle-ready, apart from an occasional encounter with the odd fighter. Their strong point was swarming a target, but they'd usually run from anything larger, even an asteroid hauler had been known to scare them off. And what the hell were the Ontanka doing here?

He entered a new course into the ship's manual controls and Lucianum streaked, almost vertically, toward the endangered Krenelia ship. He focused on the nearest Ontanka Bzzr, locked weapons, and fired, causing the enemy ship to break off its attempt on the young Krenelia ship's life. A moment later Lucianum's computer announced, "Praelor Bzzr 32685 has a lock on this starship." Several more weapon locks followed, and Lucianum shuddered violently as Praelor acid impacted with the hull.

Maerlyn disabled weapon lock notifications, as they only got in the way, and fired again. The Ontanka Bzzr exploded, showering organic material over a rather wide area. He then turned his attention to the next one, focused, locked, and prepared to fire. But a reading on his sensors got his attention for a moment, causing him to lose the Praelor ship.

Ryok Shadowblade's gunship, a ship he knew well, had launched from Empanda.

"What the fuck's he doing?" Maerlyn thought as he began keying commands into the ship's damage control board, attempting to keep the little ship going as long as possible. "He knows goddamn well that these things run from anything that fucking big."

He decided that if Ryok wanted to be stupid and try taking on Ontanka Bzzr's in a gunship, that was his own lookout, and once again focused his attention on saving the young Krenelia starship's life. He fired on the Ontanka Bzzr, causing critical damage. The Ontanka exploded, as had its swarmmate before it, and then the way was clear for the Krenelia Bzzr to attempt a landing on Empanda Station.

Once again, General sector seemed to explode with traffic.

"What the fuck's Ryok doing ...?"

"He knows goddamn well ..."

"Get that fucking gunship out of here, you useless fuckwit!"

"I swear to fucking God I'll stun you for the next fucking year ..."

And someone, with dry sarcasm: "If you live long enough, you mean."

Maerlyn keyed his own general sector transmitter open, keying his communicater to short range at the same time and said, "Ryok, are you some kind of idiot?"

"Are there different kinds now?" Caiden Shadowblade's voice over short range.

Maerlyn looked for him and picked out his own cruiser, Revenge. He had no occupancy scanner in Lucianum, but he knew that Caiden was probably in it, occupying the weapon room, that Sen was probably flying, and that Maria was probably enging.

"Actually yes," Maria's voice over short-range, "there's the usual kind, then there's the Ryok variety, and the Alexander Voltrace variety, and the Muzati variety ..."

Caiden: "I get the point, darling."

Maerlyn turned his attention back to the Bzzr's and saw that their numbers were, if anything, increasing. He fought his way back to Empanda, needing to land for repairs. If he didn't soon, Lucianum would be destroyed.

The noise in Sayeh's mind was mercifully cut off and for a moment everyone floated, silent and unmoving. It was an eternally suspended half-second. And then the battle returned in full force, a full swarm of Ontanka Bzzr's descending on Winter Storm. Ulekkin battled its way through on one side and Lucianum on the other. They wove in and out of the swarms of tiny ships in a deadly dance of fire and ice.

Maerlyn looked for Feliz as he fought his way back toward Empanda and spotted her fighter, Mojo, locked in combat with two Bzzr's. She navigated the fighter like she'd been born to fly, causing the little ship to do things only a few other people had ever managed. As Maerlyn watched, Mojo went into a spin that looked uncontrolled but wasn't, and the two Bzzr's exploded simultaneously.

Winter Storm landed for repairs, Lucianum right beside it, Mojo landing a moment later. Sayeh stepped from the dimness of the control room into the airlock, peered out, saw Heart of Gold on the docking bay, and cursed. She went over short-range: "Castor Hemlock has his transverser powered up on Empanda." He must have cheated to keep that thing. Probably bribed and bullied a few AIE officials. No wonder even Alliance governments hate him.

"Well," Matt Valentino said over short-range, "it's a good thing some of us have interdictors in our fighters."

"You have interdictors in your fighter. I should have known," Sayeh returned, "but why am I even the slightest bit surprised? You were never the variety to salvage debris after either a solo mission or a duel, unless you wanted a little something to remember said duel by."

"Why would you want to interdict the sector with all this going on anyway?" Maerlyn asked over short range, "if something went wrong with someone's ship, they'd not be able to leave the sector any more than that Tranny would."

Heart of Gold streaked into the sky. Maerlyn commed Sayeh: "Let's get Praelor Nightmare. We can't let Castor make things worse and we can't take on a tranny in fighters. He'd just wavewarp over us, killing us in the process. It's doubtful he's here to help anyone but himself anyway."

"I don't think we need to. They didn't have clearance to launch. Watch," Sayeh replied.

The three fighters launched and watched bright beams of light cut through space. An unfortunate Ontanka Bzzr, set on its course, was split in neat halves before the beam hit Heart of Gold, a spot of red fire blossoming where part of the transverser's hull had been melted to slag, at which point, Castor apparently decided that staying on the ground had its advantages, and landed Heart of Gold.

"What the fucking hell!?" Maerlyn's voice over general sector. He had never seen planetary defense lasers fire on a ship attempting to launch before. None of them had, but then again, most times ships weren't automatically denied launch clearance, not that Castor's transverser had been the original target.

It was so odd, Sayeh thought, watching two pieces of a ship spin off into space, seeing one bloom into incandescent fire from the explosion of its drive, the other half drifting out into nothingness. Sayeh had never seen a ship literally cut in half before. Any human ship would have exploded. The remaining piece of Praelor ship did not. A delicate halo of ice bloomed around it, and realizing what it was, Sayeh steered clear of it.

"Don't salvage that you idiot ..." Sen shadowblade yelling at Ryok over general sector and short range coms.

"Let him, he's stupid anyway ..." Caiden.

"What do you think that stuff would do ...?" Maerlyn.

"I don't think we want to know ..." Maria.

"Do you think he'd blow up if he salvaged that ..." Matt.

"Get out of here with that fucking Gunship ..." Maria.

"Have you decided to increase your asshole quotient today or something ...?" Feliz.

Despite its deceptively harmless appearance, it was acid strong enough to burn through layers of metal if something remelted it, something like drive energies passing through it. Everything was usually cut into small enough pieces that this danger would have been vaporized, but a planet's or station's lasers were so powerful and accurate that they destroyed with eerie precision.

There were too many Bzzr's. Most of the human ships were boxed in, Winter Storm, Ulekkin, Mojo, and Lucianum had been separated, and it seemed like they wouldn't make it.

And then the capital planets reported Frnalk starships inbound to the capital sectors, which meant the Bzzr's here were a diversion, so that when or if the escape pods grabbed them before the explosion killed them, all the pilots in 15 would be stuck possibly with them on the ground. When Cianan pointed that out, Maerlyn pointed out the ITPN stations. They could take pods from any capital world to Pax and from there to Empanda, where six BC's were currently landed, Justyce, Basilisk, Venom, Zeus's Anguish, Dauntless and Demonic Terror. Maerlyn's BC, Sapphire and Steel, was currently on Rolu in Sector 12, and at this point, inaccessible to them, as was Cianan's BC, Light Of Fire, which was currently landed on Io.

Maerlyn attempted to hold his own against the swarm of Bzzr's, but there were too many, far too many. He fired again and again, attempting to keep up with the ever-increasing damage at the same time, thus keeping Lucianum in working order. First turret 1 went critical, then turret 3. Turrets 2 and 4 continued to function, but just barely. He attempted to slip east, but the slip drive was damaged beyond repair. His remaining two turrets went next, and his sensors were at 95 percent. He attempted to make his way to Empanda, but an all too familiar gunship suddenly subwarped to within one unit of the crippled fighter. Maerlyn attempted to move out of the gunship's range, but the damn Ontanka Bzzr's had him boxed in. No matter which way he tried to move, it was as if someone had launched blockades, but these weren't blockades. They were ships, organic extensions of the Praelor themselves, or so all research had shown.

"You suck ballsatron," Ryok Shadowblade's voice said over general sector.

"Fucking Ryok," Maerlyn thought in disgust a moment before a bardenium salvo impacted with Lucianum's hull, causing it to go critical. As the klaxon that signaled the imminent destruction of the ship began to sound in his ears, Maerlyn keyed open his general sector transmitter.

"Going down!" Maerlyn called over general sector, just before his explosion lit up the night sky and the computer aboard Winter Storm reported: "The one-person fighter Lucianum has been destroyed."

An escape pod launched from Lucianum, just ahead of the explosion, and Sayeh hoped that Maerlyn's injuries weren't too bad. With no carrier landed on Outreach and no way to get to his battle cruiser, he'd have to pod back to 15 and hope he could heal himself in the med bay of his carrier, which was stored in Sayeh's garage, but only if he wasn't too badly injured to move. But Sayeh was thanking God she'd seen a pod launch at all, especially after the times she'd seen a starship destroyed and no escape pod. She'd seen that too many times over the last year, and the obvious suspect in all situations was Alexander Voltrace, who had managed, somehow, to byepass the escape systems of at least five ships a number of years ago, and who had, more recently, done it to over a dozen, resulting in the deaths of all members of the Kristos family, apart from Maria, who had been, at that time, spending most of her time in Vindico Atrum under Caiden Shadowblade's protection, and Maerlyn, who had managed to either stay hidden or stay one step ahead of anyone who tried to blow him out of space, at least until he'd passed the BC test and bought Sapphire And Steel. Then he'd taken the fight, together with the rest of the Azhaani family, to Matt Valentino and Force, nearly capturing Alexander Voltrace at one point, and making Force think twice before attempting to take over the human occupied sectors and declare themselves Government In Waiting.

As Maerlyn's ship exploded, Revenge maneuvered into a position a unit away from Ryok's gunship. The bardenium cannons of the cruiser fired and the gunship shuddered. Revenge flipped almost completely over, avoiding two Ontanka Bzzr's that had zeroed in on it, fired at the gunship again, slipped to the other end of the sector, and allowed the Praelor ships to fire on the gunship. Ryok apparently saw the danger too late and was boxed by the Bzzr's, which had, it seemed, not figured out yet that the ship they were currently shooting at wasn't the one they'd been chasing a moment before (Bzzr's aren't known for their stunning intelligence). Revenge flew on rel back toward the gunship and its weapons, both cannons and lasers fired at almost the same moment, scored multiple hits. Suddenly Bzzr's arrowed in toward Revenge like bright motes, weapons locked. And suddenly there were more Bzzr's, but they weren't Ontanka. They flew increasingly narrow spirals, cut off and dove in two arrow formations through the swarm attacking Revenge, arrowed off in either direction (letting the Ontanka chase them), and then looped almost gracefully back inward. The Ontanka had no way back toward the cruiser. Instead, they were caught between the Krenelia Bzzr's and a swarm of fighters with Mojo in the lead and were quickly destroyed. Then the cruiser angled away to avoid any possible return fire. But that, as it turned out, was unnecessary. The gunship's hull went critical (and this time, oddly, it had been surrounded by Krenelia), and another explosion lit up the blackness of space. The escape pod carrying Ryok rocketed away from the fiery remains of the ship it had launched from and initiated a wormhole jump.

"Who sucks ballsatron now?" Caiden asked over short range.

Revenge then resumed its attack on the Ontanka ships, giving the remaining fighters a bit of a breather.

"Shit!" said Sayeh. She was well and truly boxed; the little bugs just kept pouring into the sector, and what the hell was Ryok Shadowblade's gunship doing up there? Then Sayeh saw another ship, Maerlyn's cruiser, Revenge. She saw the cruiser move into attack position and fire on Ryok's ship, saw it do an almost complete flip, fire on a couple Ontanka ships, slip across the sector, and then come powering back, firing a synchronized laser and cannon salvo, something only Caiden Shadowblade knew how to do perfectly (although he was instructing Maerlyn in that rather deadly art as well,) saw the Ontanka close in and the Krenelia's tactics, and saw the gunship explode.

And then something dropped into the sector. Sayeh scanned it: "Praelor Resati Lyyrrh Jrriya: Krenelia," the computer said.

She slammed a hand down on to a nearby console. "Ehnorrai, dammit, what are you doing?" she muttered furiously. But she couldn't go see, her hull was at 70 and the Bzzr's were ...

Gone! They'd all swept back into a veritable wall of little ships at the end of the sector, making more room for that ship than they'd make even for a battle cruiser.

She checked her damages, and ran for Empanda. A turret was gone, another was at 90, another was in the 70's, the fourth was in the 50's, and her sensors were over half gone. There were so many Bzzr's in the air that you had a lot of trouble wading through them, let alone fighting them. She landed, bought repairs, and launched as fast as she could.

"What the fuck is that?" Matt Valentino was demanding over general sector. But the Bzzr's were closing in again, because the ship had retreated to a corner of the sector.

"Shit!" said Malcum. "That's the ship that brought in the Praelor jumpgate. What's one of them doing here?"

"It's a Krenelia ship," said Teresa calmly.

"It's quite obvious what it's doing here," Jason Harkness said.

"I think you're jumping to conclusions," said Cianan Azhaani.

"Kid, shut up," said Matt.

"It's a fucking Krenelia ship!" Teresa reiterated, twice the volume.

"Oi! Don't stand on the volume control!" Morpheus said.

"Quit clipping my goddamned headset," Sayeh said.

The Onati at the edge of the sector swooped through the swarm of Bzzr's and back, scattering them to the virtual winds, and said, "This is Trryhlin. Calm down. Ehnorrai is not going to make a jumpgate here, not only is there no anchor in space strong enough for one, but we have no reason to."

"Then what the fuck is it doing here?"

"This," the Resati broadcasted. Then over her implant: "We had to show them. But this is only a fraction of what I can do." Then over general sector: "In three seconds, try moving, in any fashion."

Sayeh started to move across the sector-and realized that it was taking twice as long.

"Something's disrupting our drives!" Teresa said.

"What are you trying to do? Prove that you can kill us?" Matt asked, still distrustful.

"No," the Resati broadcasted.

"It's a temporal disturbance!" Rothque said, awed. Sayeh noticed that everyone's voices were strange and slow, that every one of her movements, though not weak and sluggish, were in slow motion.

Then it lifted. Sayeh breathed a sigh of relief. Having her movement limited by the speed at which the cycle of Time was moving wasn't something she'd thought of.

But what if he speeded it up? Would their brains work only at their normal speed, or would that change? And was a temporal disturbance only sector-wide, or ... She couldn't wrap her brain around the concept that one ship could cause something much bigger. And what was Ehnorrai doing, playing with time?

Quietly, without fanfare, Ehnorrai's ship left the sector, the blue mouth of the wormhole opening for it, wrapping around it, closing over it and swallowing it, then vanishing completely. There was no sign of Ehnorrai, no trace of Lyyrrh Jrriya's drive energies now.

As the pod's force field seized Maerlyn, he felt lancing agony as his left arm was broken. he also felt pain in his head as it impacted with the wall of the escape pod he'd been deposited into. He wondered what would be waiting for him on Outreach and then figured he already knew. Ground Praelor, and not the ground representatives of the Ontanka faction either. what was it the Krenelia had said at the conference before Castor had decided to come bursting in and popping off Praelor lethal rounds? "Worse than the Ontanka," but what could possibly be worse than the Ontanka, unless it was the Static, the race responsible for the black hole in Sector 24 that had destroyed High Guard Command two years ago? He decided to take the Krenelia's word for it. He knew next to nothing about this new Praelor faction, only having encountered them once before, and what little he knew wasn't much to go on. Very few people knew much about them (they were frighteningly mysterious, a deadly unknown quantity in the universe), and here he was about to drop right into their laps.

After grabbing the salvage container that was in the pod with him and putting it, one-handed, into his backpack, he drew the stun turret from his third holster, the one reserved for Praelor-lethal ammunition, thanking God that his shooting hand wasn't attached to the arm that was currently singing "Oh say can you seeeeeeeeee, that a Praelor just diiiiiiiiiiiiied!" But loading a Praelor lethal mag would be a bit of a problem. He turned his head to the right as the pod's wormhole drive engaged and took one of the straps of the messenger bag he wore in his mouth, accessed his ammunition storage container with his left hand, biting down on the strap as pain rocketed up his arm to his shoulder, balanced the turret against his right shoulder, removed a Praelor lethal mag, slammed it into the turret, and relaxed his jaws.

He kept his nearly useless left hand near his second holster, which contained a hollow cylindrical device, one of the odd alien weapons you sometimes picked up trying your hand in archeology. In a pinch, he could still draw if a human target presented itself, and if Ryok hadn't been smart, which he usually wasn't, he'd probably finish up podded to Outreach right along with him. It was a situation he didn't really care for very much. Psychotic mutant ground Praelor on one side, Ryok Shadowblade and whoever else had been in his ship on the other.

The pod landed on Outreach's landing pad and sanitation drones clustered around it immediately, carrying it away, but Maerlyn had no time to watch this, as fifteen insectoid creatures converged on him. These, however, were like no Ontanka Maerlyn had ever seen before. Their height was greater for one thing, and for another, their exoskeletons were what appeared to be a dead, patchy red-and-black rather than the flashy (and often hideously clashing) multicolored exoskeletons of the Ontanka ("Hadn't anyone heard of color-coordinated shell-paint?" Sayeh might have said). Also, these creatures possessed claws capable of tearing a man apart with ease, similar to what velociraptor claws had looked like, with one long, arched one designed for ripping in and pulling insides out and the rest for dissecting the bits. Maerlyn had seen such creatures before, long ago on Aquili, when he'd been only a child. These were the things that had killed every other man, woman, and child on the planet, and whose warped telepathic emissions had wiped out the first eight years of his life from his memory, until the Krenelia had recently restored them to him during Sayeh's first trip to Krenelia space. Maerlyn aimed his turret at the nearest creature and prepared to fire, when a second escape pod landed and Ryok Shadowblade emerged from it, favoring his right leg.

"I wonder who blew you out of space," Maerlyn thought.

Ryok aimed his turret at Maerlyn and fired, but instead of the usual electric blue bolt of stun energy, the turret discharged a large cloud of matter, usually intended to impact with Praelor exoskeletons. Maerlyn dodged anyway, took cover behind a cargo hauler, crouched low, holstered his turret and drew his hollow. He quickly checked the power level and ammo, aimed at Ryok from behind cover and fired. The bolt hit Ryok in the groin. A moment later, Maerlyn had holstered the hollow and drawn his pulse emitter and made short work of Ryok's droids, whilst at the same time he said, "Xena, shoot Ryok." There was no real reason for him to do this, as xena and Rani weren't as restricted by in-built programming as were most droids, but he did it out of long force of habit.

Xena, Maerlyn's security droid, who was dressed as if she was about to go out for a casual evening, aimed her stun turret attachment at Ryok and fired. This bolt struck Ryok in the face.

Maerlyn broke cover, drawing his turret and firing at the nearest ground Praelor. The shot blew a hole in the creature's side and a greenish ichor began bubbling from the wound. The Praelor screamed in pain and spat acid at him, but Rani, his medical droid, leapt in front of him and took the full force of the Praelor's attack. She slumped over, her systems temporarily powered down, a smoking scorch mark on her smooth exterior.

"Xena, shoot Ryok," Maerlyn commanded again and the droid obeyed, firing another bolt of stun energy which impacted with Ryok's chest.

Before he could tell Xena to shoot Ryok again, however, a ground Praelor crouched in preparation for an attack. Xena leapt in front of Maerlyn, powering down as the acid struck her.

"Fuck!" Maerlyn cried and shot the Praelor.

Rani powered back up and Maerlyn said, "Rani diagnose Ryok."

"Ryok Shadowblade has 5 minutes and 34 seconds of stun time," Rani replied.

Maerlyn shot the Praelor again, and then again, dodging the acid streams that issued from their mouths, kicking one as it got too close (and swearing in pain; kicking these things was like kicking metal), crouched behind the cargo hauler again (the poor little ship was now streaked with scorch marks), and fired another round at the Praelor. This time the creature slumped over, dying.

Xena powered back up and Maerlyn ordered both droids to follow him. Ryok's droids were also powered up again, but without him to tell them what to do, they were next to useless, unlike Xena and Rani, whom Maerlyn had partially freed from Lucko Robotics's restrictive programming.

He turned to aim at the next Praelor and saw that, just like in the space around Empanda, there were far too many of them for him to successfully make a fight of it. He broke cover, firing a parting shot at one of the Praelor blocking his path, and made for the ITPN transport station just as the corpse behind him gave a tremendous shudder and exploded. A wing and one of its mandibles struck Ryok's stunned, helpless body.

But before he'd gone more than a couple steps, he noticed that Ryok was beginning to move. Apparently one of his droids had succeeded in healing his stun time and now he was aiming his turret at Maerlyn.

"Forget something?" Maerlyn inquired as the shot, like the previous one, dissolved into a puff of dust and floated away, "why aren't you using those on the Praelor?"

Before Ryok could answer, six Praelor, who had surrounded him, discharged their acid at him. His skin began to bubble immediately and his clothing dissolved on his body, some of it actually melting into the flesh. He hadn't been wearing armor, a huge mistake in this situation, and thanks to the debilitating effects of Praelor acid, he was now powerless to put any on. His screams echoed throughout the space port as his skin and flesh beneath it fried in the continuous shower of Praelor acid impacting with his body, most of which looked more like something you'd expect to see in a pot of boiling water than a human being.

Then one of the creatures reached him and grasped him with its claws. A moment later, the thing had torn a huge hole in Ryok's side, ripping out a large chunk of flesh. Blood fountained up, nearly reaching the domed roof of the spaceport. The other creatures reached Ryok a moment later and began tearing him to pieces, still alive and screaming. Two pinned him down, and Maerlyn saw those big arched claws put to use as they literally ripped the flesh in layers back from Ryok's bones. They lowered their heads and Maerlyn, hearing a distinct crunching, decided finally that it was time to haul ass.

"Fuck this happy horse shit," Maerlyn thought as he entered the ITPN station, paid for a ticket to Empanda, and waited for the pod to arrive, all the while hoping that the Praelor on the landing pad would be too distracted with Ryok to worry about anyone who may have been trying to pod off the planet.

Ryok's screams had been mercifully cut off by the time the pod arrived and Maerlyn boarded it. He fancied he could still hear them after the pod had launched, although he knew that was impossible.

When the pod landed on Pax, he quickly paid for a ticket to Empanda. The second pod seemed to take forever, but there were no ground Praelor on Pax, so the wait was a bit less tense. When the second pod landed on Empanda station, Maerlyn ran at top speed for the apartment lobby. He entered Sayeh's apartment and ran for the garage. He entered his carrier, Counterforce, and made for the medical bay. He lay down on one of the beds and medical drones began healing his injuries, all the while beeping adjitatedly at his not quite human physiology. Less than a minute later, the drones returned to their nitches in the walls and Maerlyn stood up.

He exited the med bay, entered the docking bay, and made his way up to the control room. He powered up and transported the ship to the public docking bay, peered out, and raised his communicator.

"Anyone needs healing, let me know," he said.