"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" A woman with disorderly blond hair pounded her fist on her ship's console and then murmured an apology to the walls. "So, what, you're not gonna let me in?"

The man on the viewscreen tried to look stern, but his darting eyes gave him away. "Look..." he glanced down, "Miss Valentine, you're lucky I don't call 'em down here right now." He swallowed nervously.

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, you're not exactly 100 all-natural yourself. Are you just going to leave me out in the cold?" She gave the man a disgusted snort. "The Nietzscheans are taking care of their own better than we are, and that's the most pathetic thing I ever heard." Before the man could respond, she jabbed a key on her console.

"Harper! Looks like we're not gonna get those parts after all."

A scrawny human smudged with machine grease appeared through the cockpit doors. "What? Why? We all know my genius knows no bounds, but even I can't keep this ship together forever without an AP solenoid valve."

The woman ignored her crewmate for a moment as she read the file the space traffic controller had sent her before refusing her access. She buried her head in her hands as she read through the official-looking document. "Harper, let me ask you something."

"Shoot."

"What did I do to piss off the Divine? And how can I make it better?"

Harper shrugged. "I dunno, boss. That's Rev's territory." He leaned over the pilot's chair and tried to read the transmission over her shoulder. "Genites? What do they have to do with us?" His curiosity was tinged with worry. He doubted the Maru's crew had won the Genite Clearing House Sweepstakes. They were the 'no news is good news' sort of people.

"It says we've been charged with sedition and conspiracy to raise rebellious element." She knew what the words meant, but none of it made any sense. "What, do they not like Rev or something? Because I don't remember conspiring to raise any sort of element, mutinous or otherwise." She scrolled down, and her face paled. When she didn't speak for a minute, Harper asked her what was wrong.

Shakily, she began reading the final paragraphs. "Captain Rebecca Valentine, Reverend Behemial Far-Traveler, Seamus Zelazny Harper, and Trance Gemini have been tried in absentia and found guilty on evidence provided anonymously. Should you see them or their ship, the Eureka Maru, please alert your local garrison of the Knights of Genetic Purity. Anyone who has provided aid or failed to report the afore-mentioned will be charged with aiding and abetting fugitives. They will face harsh punishment when they are located, along with any co-conspirators."

She turned wide eyes on Harper. For a moment, she was silent, and then she swallowed. "Hang on to something." She didn't answer his perplexed glance but grabbed the ship's controls and shoved Maru into slipstream with less than her usual grace.

A few hours later, she had recovered herself and was fuming in the Mess. "It was him! I don't know why he did it, but it has to be that filthy rodent!"

A purple girl raised her hand. "Um, Beka, who is this? And what did he do?"

"Gerentex! He must have told the Genites that we had planned to salvage that High Guard ship and then conveniently forgot to mention that it was his idea in the first place."

When she stopped to draw breath, the seated Magog put in a quiet word. "Beka, I do not doubt what you say, but that was three years ago. Why do you think would he wait so long to take his revenge upon us?"

It was hard to continue her wrathful shouting in the face of such a reasonable question. She sighed. But wrathful shouting was so much fun. "I don't know. Maybe he got into trouble with them and made a deal, said he could provide information about some underground rebels." She snorted a laugh at the picture of herself as a rebel leader. Beka Valentine would take a well-paying salvage job over glorious battle any day, thank you.

They continued in this vein for awhile, but Beka knew that speculation over the warrant wouldn't do them any good. It was here now and might as well be carved in stone. Genite edicts didn't come any other way. Harper had several wild ideas of places they could hide, most of which Beka discounted immediately. Even his more reasonable ideas didn't inspire much optimism in her, but then Rev said something interesting.

Harper yelped. "You've got to be kidding me!"

A raised eyebrow was all Beka needed to express similar sentiments. But maybe he had something there. "You know, I bet everyone in the Known Worlds would side with Harper on that one," she said thoughtfully. "Who would believe it?"

Rev bowed his head, hiding a tiny smile. It wasn't very Wayist to gloat.

Trance looked surprised, and that was something few people had ever seen. "I... I wouldn't have thought of it," she said in a dreamy voice. Then she came back to herself and favored the crew with a sunny grin. "I hear the leaves are pretty this time of year."

Harper threw his hands up. They were all insane, obviously, to even consider this. "No, I don't have a better idea," he replied to the question he knew Beka was going to ask. "Hey, maybe I could show you guys the statue. The Nietzscheans didn't tear it down. It's a beautiful thing."

Beka looked around the table and laughed. This really was crazy. "Then it's unanimous?" She shook her head. "We're all officially certifiable, you know." Trance was smiling hugely by now, and that was always a good omen. "All right, to the cockpit!"

She slid into the pilot's chair and gripped the controls. She hadn't been this way in several years, but that was no obstacle. As she flew, she found that the route had deteriorated a bit in recent years. All the better for them; if less people came here, there was less of a chance that anyone would run into them now. Especially Genite someones who wanted their asses on a silver platter.