"So, she did tell you what information was passed to her." Kohei murmured thoughtfully, staring at the board before him.

"Yes." Tatsuhiro nodded. "Was information made available to us, like she said?"

"Yes. I forwarded it on to Intel as soon as I realized what it was." Given that he had done that a mere six hours before, Kohei expected it to be days more before the data was thoroughly parsed. "So what happened then?"

"We were fine until we reached the entrance of the port..."


"Oh for the love of little apples." Cáel muttered crossly, peering over the edge of the hab closest to the port entrance. Set up, just beyond the steps leading to the vapor lock were no fewer than ten taifeadta with various picter and vid equipment arrayed for quick use.

"I'm beginning to think your mudrackers are wary to your tricks, Colonel." Tatsuhiro teased, honestly amused by the situation and the great lengths Cáel went to disguise her presence from the taifeadta. The Marines were getting quite the lesson in Guard stealth.

"We would be a in world of hurt if they knew I was with you, Taisa. No, this is the result of someone offering them a significant sum to compromise you." She sat down cross-legged, and began pulling things out of her belt pouch.

"I have a flash bang grenade." Kenji offered, which earned him a withering look from Tatsuhiro.

"I will pretend I didn't hear that, Senshi." He warned in a low tone.

"If I'm going to expedite your escape through violent means, Senshi, I need to be more focused. We really can't afford to damage the vapor locks." Cáel replied mildly. Tatsuhiro gave her a curious look, noticing a familiar purple metal square in the pile from her pouch.

"What are you looking for?"

"My hotwire. Ah, here it is. I have a plan, but," she looked back at them, "you're not going to get stubborn are you?" It was more of a plaintive plea for them to refrain, than any attempt at a slight.

"That depends. What is our role in it?"

"As soon as the way is clear, you make all haste through the locks to the shuttle." Cáel began returning things to her pouch.

"That's not a plan, those are marching orders." Tatsuhiro gave her a flat look.

"True, but I fear you might try to stop me if I told you what I'm planning on doing." She at least had the grace to look sheepish.

"You are planning something foolish?"

"I prefer the term reckless myself." She closed her pouch and crawled back over to them.

"Are you certain you aren't secretly a Space Wolf?"

"What's that?"


"Did you have an idea what she was planning before the ruckus ensued?" Kohei queried, and laid down a black game piece. Tatsuhiro shook his head.

"She dislikes asking allies to compromise their morals." Yoshi added, considering the move. He had been studiously trying not to read Kohei's thoughts, so Tatsuhiro's and Kenji's were coming in particularly strong. The Librarian placed a white game piece down on the Go board between him and the Daimyo.

"I thought you said you only did a cursory reading of her." Manzo noted. He and Roka were seated also, watching the game with interest, since the winner got to play them next.

"She knew what I was. She deliberately left certain aspects open for me to glean when I deep read her intention." Yoshi shrugged. It had startled him to find that sort of training in a non-psyker.

"Carry on, Brother." Kohei waved at Tatsuhiro, to continue his tale.


With a certain amount of trepidation the Marines agreed to stay on the roof as Cáel caused a distraction. Twenty minutes later, her voice broke the silence over the vox.
"Be ready to move, gentlemen."

An engine whined and wheels screeched as an open air delivery truck careened around the corner from the vehicle street onto the footpath leading to the entrance to the port.

"THE ACCELERATOR IS STUCK!" Cáel shouted a frantic warning to the gathered taifeadta and laid on the vehicle's horn.

The taifeadta scattered as the out of control vehicle smashed in the assorted picter and vid equipment, missing several muckrackers by mere centimeters.

Tatsuhiro and Kenji didn't wait for the 'lucky' survivors to collect their wits, they moved with all speed off the hab and past the wrecked equipment and into the relative safety of the vapor lock.

"We're in, Colonel."

"Good." Through the vox they could still hear the horn blaring. "Get to the shuttle. You pilot will have clearance to leave in 2 minutes."

"What about you?" Tatsuhiro demanded.

"Separate orders. Don't worry, I'll be back by the end of the month to annoy Kohei."


"So you left her?" Yoshi glanced up, as Kohei snorted softly.

"What else could they do, Brother? To stay would expose the ruse. And," he made his move, laying down another black game piece, "it's clear to me that she planned to stay planetside with that sort of diversion."

"I did not feel right about leaving her." Kenji spoke up, knowing he risked Kohei's ire.

"Your loyalty is admirable, Brother, but misplaced." Kohei remarked mildly.

"With all due respect, sir, the Colonel hasn't lied to us. Yes, she's challenged us, doesn't always follow orders, and will withhold information, but she's never lied to us, which is more than I can say about High Command." Tatsuhiro said, before Kenji could get himself in deeper.

"She has too many masters." Kohei eyed Tatsuhiro grumpily.

"She has only one master. You don't even need to read her mind to know it. She's Guard." Yoshi said simply, laying down a white game piece directly in front of the one Kohei just laid down.

"Then she lied about having multiple masters." Roka grumbled.

"One can have multiple masters on record, but chose to answer to only one." Yoshi replied evenly.

"And what promise do we have that she won't switch masters as it becomes convenient?" Manzo demanded.

Yoshi smiled bitterly.

"She can't. It's imprinted on her psyche. To change masters would break her."


Tatsuhiro was reading up on Sentinel's early history when the receiving agent contacted him.

"Taisa? We have a courier requiring your mark."

"I'm not expecting anything."

"Yes, but the courier refuses to unload the crate unless you accept." The agent sounded aggrieved, and with good cause. If the courier wouldn't even unload the crate, he couldn't even begin the security scan of the object.

"I'm on my way." Tatsuhiro tugged on a robe and made the trek down to the landing deck.

The receiving agent was easy to pick out, he was the only person arguing with a brightly hued Kru twice his size. Tatsuhiro joined them, noting the courier's crest feathers were slightly flared in annoyance.

"I am Taisa Tatsuhiro."

The courier turned and bowed deeply to Tatsuhiro, civilian style, his feathers flattening.

"Deepest apologies, great Taisa." The courier spoke passably good Gothic, a bit of a rarity, given that Kru vocal cords weren't really suited to human style speech. "But my employer was quite insistent that the crate be delivered to you alone."

"Oh?" Tatsuhiro took the offered dataslate from the recieving agent and licked a thumb, pressing it to the bioscreen. The slate beeped, and the Kru straightened up, waving at the steveadore waiting at the top of the ramp with the crate. The steveadore, a human female, tilted back a wheeled contraption to move the crate down the ramp and deposit in front of the receiving agent.

"Do you happen to know what's in it?" Tatsuhiro inquired of the orange and yellow Kru.

"Alas I do not. My duty is to deliver." Both courier and steveadore bowed once more, which Tatsuhiro acknowledged with a dip of his head. He appreciated the dedication the courier exhibited. Most would have allowed themselves to be cowed into giving the receiving agent the crate.

The courier and steveadore disappeared back into their ship as the agent made his peremptory scans.

"What did you get, Taisa?" Asked a cheerful voice in the vicinity of his left elbow.

Moya felt a heavy hand bear down and squeeze her shoulder.

"Do not ever do that again, Taifeadta." Tatsuhiro managed to keep the growl out of his voice.

"Y-yes, sir." Moya blinked back tears of pain as his fingers bit into her shoulder.

"How did you learn to move so quietly?"

Moya swallowed.
"I got modded."

"To move silently?" Tatsuhiro relented and released her. In his experience moving silently had to be trained.

"It's more a heightened sense of balance, you learn to move silently as part of the post modding therapy." Moya explained, rubbing her shoulder. The tender skin was doubtlessly bruised now.

"I see. And why have you returned to the flight deck, Taifeadta? You know you are not suppose to be here." Not, if Cáel was to be believed, that telling her would in fact change the redhead's ways.

"I was hoping to interview some of the flight deck crew." The embeddened taifeadta had been in the process of interviewing everyone who worked on the Audacious, much to the surprise of a number of the human crew, who couldn't possibly fathom what made their lives so interesting to Oasians.

"Why are you trying to interview them while they are supposed to be working?"

"I wasn't, at least not right away. I wanted to observe them before interviewing them."

Tatsuhiro gave her a slightly incredulous look.

"You should be more careful, taifeadta. Your actions could be misconstrued as those of a spy."

"I- oh. Apologies." She replied in a small voice.

"Scan completed and cleared, Taisa. Shall we open it?" The receiving agent asked, noticing Moya, and pretending not to.

"Yes please. Stay, taifeadta. I wish to speak with you further."

Moya perked up a little. "Yes, sir."

The receiving agent pried the lid off and pulled out a heavy basket full of fragrant fruits and nuts.

"Rings above, who did you impress, Taisa?" Moya whispered, admiring the baskets' contents.

"I do not know. What are these?"

"Gift baskets?" Moya gave him a puzzled look. "You don't do gift baskets on your planet?"

"None of our home systems do. What is their significance?"

"Usually we give them out for exemplary services rendered. But the variety and amounts- you've impressed someone with deep pockets."

"Deep pockets?"

"Wealthy. Oi, agent, was there a message with these?"

"There is a packet- hey!" The agent helped as Moya snatched the packet away from him and presented it to Tatsuhiro.

"Thank you." Tatsuhiro sighed internally at Moya, opening the heavy parchment envelope and scanning the contents. The calligraphy was different enough to cause him pause, but he muddled through.

"Who sent it?" Moya asked impatiently.

"The Starlight Express. These are to be given to the squad that cleared out the Farthest Shore." He glanced at the agent. "Are there only 11, agent?"

"Yes Taisa."

"Is that a problem, Taisa?" Moya asked.

"There were 12 of us." He studied the list that described the different items someone had thoughtfully included.

"They probably didn't count Cáel. She insisted we remove all mention of her from our articles." Moya remarked, reaching in for a basket only for the receiving agent to slap her hand away. "Where is Her Bossiness anyways? She should be explaining all of this to you."

"She is away on official duty. "

Moya turned her beryl green eyes on him sharply.

"Not according to the Army. As far as they are concerned, she's here."

"And you know this how?" Tatsuhiro raised an eyebrow at her, and Moya pinked, starting to back up.

"Taifeadta privilege - ow!" Tatsuhiro's hand clamped back down on her bruised shoulder.

"You can't demand that information from me! I'm a taifeadta! I have protection!" She huffed at him.

"You are on a ship of the Imperium, taifeadta O'Henry. Oasian law does not trump Legion security. How are you privy to this information?"

Moya, discovering that trying to twist free only resulted in his grip tightening whimpered, then whispered "-dataslate."

"What about a dataslate?"

"I-I took Cáel's."

"How did you access the Colonel's dataslate?"

Moya beligerantly said nothing until Tatsuhiro squeezed.

"Agh! Stop! Half of my geneseed is hers."

"You're saying she is your mother?"

"Great Terra no! Ugh, she's be a terrible mother. No, my father was so taken with the mythic Champion of Dodo he ordered her gene sequence as the other half of my profile when he went to the Genebank."

"Does the Colonel know this?"

"Probably." Moya flinched when Tatsuhiro frowned at her. "C'mon, this is a cutthroat business! I use ever asset I got to get the facts first."

"Admitting to espionage does not help your case, taifeadta."

"Espionage?" Moya glared offended up at him, and in that moment, he could see the familial facial traits between the two. "Nothing of the sort! All I do is check that whatever the official line the Army gives is the truth! I would never compromise any mission!"

"Yet you would compromise the Colonel's security clearance?" Tatsuhiro was beginning to suspect Moya had a long standing grudge with Cáel that was in no way Cáel's doing.

"She's a Guard plant! Do you trust her not to betray you and the Army to the Grand Dame?"
It was such a bizarre accusation that Tatsuhiro questioned if it was warp maddness.

"You claim to seek the truth, but your actions are more reminiscent of the muckrackers on Auk."

"You had something to do with that runaway truck on Auk?" Moya demanded.

"We did not."

"Define we." Moya hissed.

"The Legion had no part in the action against the muckrackers on Auk." Tatsuhiro intoned, having a moment of clarity as to why Cáel acted the way she did. As frustrating as it had been at the time, her every action had been to shield the Legion from negative backlash.

"I knew it! Cáel did it, didn't she? She takes every opportunity to screw with us, aaagh-" Moya's vindicated smirk turned to a look of pain as Tatsuhiro grabbed her other arm and held it behind her back.

"I will have that dataslate, taifeadta." There was no room in his tone for argument.

"Yes, yes, just stop squeezing-" she whined. He released her shoulder, and she pulled a nondescript dataslate from her calf pocket, handing it to him.

"Can you please let me go now?"

"No. Your actions have compromised a high ranking officer, and guest of the Legion. I'm taking you to the quartermaster."


Terms to Know:

geneseed: DNA

gene sequence: a genetic profile, jargon term in reference to selecting specific genetic traits

Going/went to the Genebank: in the Oasis system parents to be go to Genebanks to select the DNA that makes up their children. This is done because there is a high rate of spontaneous miscarriage in natural conception.

Grand Dame: leader of the system's Genebank Guard

Go: a strategy game from Terra that goes back to pre-Age of Strife times

Flash bang grenade: a favorite tactical grenade of the author's. Produces a loud noise and a bright enough flash to rupture eardrums and temporarily blind people unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast radius. Some have enough of a percussion to temporarily stun a victim.


Hello again! Thank you for reading this far, and as always feel free to note me if you notice in universe discrepancies or gammar/spelling errors.