Divergence 4

"Alex??" Liz jumped up, staring at the familiar face and not quite sure whether her eyes were playing tricks on him. Impulsively she reached for one of the hands that he had spread wide, just to feel the fingers beneath her. They seemed extremely solid, (well, as solid as you'd want fingers to be at least,) warm and entirely human. Somehow that didn't really help her make much sense of the situation.

"This... this... if this is some sort of a trick, I will be EXTREMELY pissed at you," she warned Ava. "Alex... Alex died. I saw his body. Max freakin' tried to bring him back from the dead, for cripes' sake! Which, which means that whoever or whatever is standing in the room with us, that it isn't really..."

"Do you want me to try to *prove* that I'm the same guy that you've known since we were ten, Liz??" Alex, (or whoever) asked, shaking his head a little regretfully in, Liz had to admit, exactly the way that Alex probably would have. "I can try to go through exactly what you told me to convince me not to go to Topolsky about the blood switch thing, or anything else you can think of, but that's going to take a while. Or... you could first listen to our explanation about what really happened when you all thought I died, and why, and make up your mind about that."

Liz tried furiously to think about that, looking at Ava, and Rath, and back to whoever might be wearing Alex's face. "Go through it however you like," she said sadly, "but I can't say I'm going to be easily convinced." And she sat down, folding both arms across her chest.

Alex laughed nervously. "Umm, sorry guys," he said in a stage whisper to Ava and Rath. "Maybe I should have waited for my cue at that, but I couldn't stand to let her think for another second that I was dead... and to be honest, I guess I was assuming that she'd hug me so hard she'd nearly crack my ribs and babble for a minute and then everything would be good."

"It sokay," Ava told him.

"As far as the body you saw," Rath put in, "If Max had examined that a little closer instead of just trying to get it breathing again, he'd probably have noticed that something was wrong, because that thing was never really human. I think I did a decent job of making it look like Alex here, but that thing was really made outta two pieces of roadkill that I morphed into him, while Ava was saving him from the scene of the crash."

"But... but that crash was arranged by, by Tess," Liz stuttered as she tried to play cross-examiner. "*SHE* was convinced that Alex was dead, I'm sure of it. So how...." She couldn't even figure out how to answer that question.

"Maybe we'd better back up a little," Alex told her. "I went over to Valenti's place as part of a pretty stupid 'sting operation', trying to get Tess to say something incriminating on tape that we -- Rath, Ava, and I -- ccould take to Max and Isabel to back up what we would tell them about Tess. Ava had managed to put a kind of 'mental shield' over my brain, but when Tess started to panic, she broke through the shield, and my body went into a kind of suspended animation as a side effect. Tess thought I was dead, so she arranged the fake car accident to cover things up, and Rath and Ava couldn't stop her. They got to the scene of the accident just before the police did... Ava took out what was left of the block and revived me from the death trance, and Rath... well, you see how that part fits in now I think, right??

"Yeah, a little. But why??" Liz had to blurt out. "Why would you play along with her scheme, why fake that you were really dead??" And then the answer hit her.

"Because we couldn't afford to have Tess suspect that we were on her trail," Rath put in. "If she found out Alex wasn't really dead, she might well try to kill him again... er, well, TRY to kill him for the first time, since I don't think she actually wanted him dead that time. But if she thought that she couldn't keep him quiet with her powers any more, and rather than let him tell Max what he knew.... well, you know. Even a mysterious disappearance of his body would probably get her thinking the wrong thing...."

"What if you could have come to Max directly, the day after he saw your body??" Liz pressed. "If Tess only found out after he knew the truth...."

"We actually discussed that at the time," Ava said. "Two things.... one, we thought that Max, even you, might not believe that this was the real Alex and not a shifter." She laughed hollowly at the irony there. "And two, well, what do you think Tess might do if she thought she had lost everything?? We didn't really want to find out."

"So, what do you think, Liz??" Alex asked, biting the tip of his tongue.

"It kind of hangs together, assuming that things like that mental shields, death trances, and transforming dead animals into dead people are possible," Liz said slowly. "Which, given the kinds of things I've already seen, they don't sound too unbelievable. But, well, I'd like to ask you a few trick questions at this point anyway Alex... just to try and put your identity as much beyond doubt as possible."

"Ever the seeker after scientific precision," Alex said softly. "Okay, ask away."

"Where did we meet, as in first actually speak to each other??" Liz asked. "And when??"

"In the ravine woods, up halfway to Mesaliko," Alex repeated without hesitation. "Seven years ago. You were trying to catch a lizard to bring in for science class, and I was playing knight of the round table in the woods around Camelot with a toy sword and shield."

Liz smiled. "Umm... not sure if *you'll* remember this one actually, but what was the slide you were showing me when you went off on the 'travel is so amazing' soapbox?"

Alex smiled sadly. "That would be the northern lights... which I never really saw, of course, but we'll leave that aside for now."

Liz smirked as she delivered her final clue. "Scream 2 and notting hill."

Alex groaned. "Oh, do you *really* want me to tell Rath and Ava about the time I accidentally walked in on you and Maria when you were changing??"

She got up. "Not really, but it doesn't matter now." She rushed over and tackled him. "Alex, oh my gawd, I can't... well, first off, I'm kinda sorry that I had to give you such a hard time about it all, but..."

"I understand," he said in a friendly whisper. "This once, you had to be absolutely, positively sure."

"And... and you're alive!! You're... umm, do you guys know about, about Isabel and..."

"We've kinda picked up that they left the planet," Rath said. "Isabel, Michael, and Tess. Did they go home or..."

"Not exactly," Liz explained. "After we... once it was clear what Tess had done, err, I guess I mean what she had tried to do, or something... anyway, I told Max that he couldn't let her bring the Granolith to Kivar. So Michael and Isabel have taken her to a colony world... Stellyfroos Gamma or something like that. They're hoping to find friendlies there."

"So she really was working for the sunuvabitch," Rath muttered under her breath. "I thought there was something about a secret covenant in the memories of hers I glimpsed, but I... I could hardly believe it."

"Well, we'll sort all that out in due time," Alex said. "By the way, Liz, good questioning technique. You didn't pick on a single thing that, say, someone who had ransacked my memories before I died would have been likely to see as important."

Liz smiled faintly. "Okay, maybe we'd better go back and pick up the original narration now, from before we were..." she beamed at Alex... "interrupted. You guys were watching Tess secretly, had found out that Alex was really in Las Cruces, then what??"

Ava smiled faintly as Alex sat casually down on the floor and Liz's eyes followed him. "Well, it wasn't very long after that Alex 'came back from Sweden'... we kept watching, figuring out that he was either keeping Tess' secret or that she'd managed to change his memories... another thing that we've never been able to do with our powers." She chuckled dryly. "I actually managed to go undercover and eavesdrop, mindwarping so that you'd only see me as some other high school girl who you probably wouldn't notice even if you saw me."

"Right about then, as you probably remember, all of that stuff about Laurie Dupree, the gandarium, and the hive queen hit," Rath put in. "You guys were running around so much that it was hard for us to keep track of what was going on where, but we were there in Frazier woods when you discovered that Alex and Kyle were trapped in the Gandarium cave." Rath shook his head, scoffing under his breath. "If you and Max hadn't been crowding around the cave opening so much, Liz, and Tess and Isabel some of the time too, I'd have sent a rock into the barrier crystals at about half the speed of sound, seen if that woulda got them free. But they were okay in the end at least, thank goodness. And Jim Valenti wasn't the only one who was panicking when the entire lot of you disappeared for a Vegas trip, by the way."

"Oh lord above," Liz swore mildly, picturing the scene. "You didn't spot any of us leaving campus??"

"Nope, we were trying to squeeze in a little power training during the day and only showed up a little before the end of classes to find Tess," Ava put in. "Hoping to come up with something that might give us an edge against her. But we couldn't find any trace of you, and neither could the ex-sheriff, and I'm picturing Tess dragging the other hybrids off to Antar and you and Maria and Alex lying dead somewhere... wasn't even sure *what* she'd do about Kyle."

"It was a few weeks after Vegas that we finally got up the nerve to make contact with Alex," Rath said "Tess was starting to spend a lot of time doing 'memory recovery' with Max, and Ava thought that she was probably trying to mindwarp him subliminally with that routine, so we didn't have much time to make our move. Alex wasn't too happy to see us, but Ava was able to get him to remember a bit of what Tess did, and he agreed to work with us to try and take her down. He got the idea of trying to confront Tess with the mindwarp 'wearing off', without letting her know about us, and hoping that she'd say something for the record that we could take to Max."

"Say something for the record..." Liz repeated thoughtfully... they'd mentioned this before, but she hadn't clued in then. "Like, into a tape recorder, made in Korea, that got wrecked in the car crash??"

"Wha... how did you know that??" Alex asked, smiling.

"They found some broken parts of the recorder," Liz told him. "Valenti told us about them just after Tess left, but we didn't know what they meant."

"Damn, I thought I had got all of it," Rath commented. "But, well, no harm done I guess. Sorry that we had to let you think that Alex was dead for so long, but..."

"Yeah, I kinduv understand why you had to do that," Liz assured him. "I think Max and the others will too, if we tell them right. They'll probably be so happy to know that Alex isn't REALLY dead that forgiving the rest won't seem so hard." She sighed. "Assuming that I can convince them more easily than you were able to convince me, that it's really you."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "I can't wait to see them... but I still can't afford to get recognized by anyone outside our little circle. After all, I'm still legally dead, and there isn't really any way to explain to the authorities that the body that was identified by my parents and on and on wasn't really me."

"Yeah," Liz admitted, frowning slightly in thought. "It was a *very* good likeness Rath... excellent detail work and all that. But I've got the makings of an idea I think. After all, if we can come up with some flimsy excuse as to how... nobody would really be able to challenge your identity, not for long."

"What kind of flimsy excuse are you thinking of, Liz??" Ava asked.

"Not sure yet... maybe that it really was Alex, but he really wasn't dead?? Buried alive syndrome... we can work out the details later." She took a deep breath. "For the meantime, how about if I bring some of the others here as soon as possible? Max and Maria, maybe Kyle too if I can get them all together."

"Beat us to suggesting it," Rath admitted.

"And I'd like to make one suggestion.... this time, I want them to meet Alex first. Once they're satisfied that it's really him and start asking for the reasons why, we can bring you in."

The three of them exchanged looks. "Worth a try," Ava put in.

"Yeah, I was going to suggest the same thing," Alex said. "It made a little sense to do it this way for you, since it had to be Rath pretending to be Michael and doing the go-fetch run. But now we've got a genuine original, as it were."

There was a bit of an awkward pause at that. "Okay, well, I'd better get going home, on that note," Liz decided. "Probably better for you not to expose yourself and risk getting recognized as Michael, Rath... I can just walk over to the bus stop and get home from there. But... if I get an opportunity to bring Max or Maria here, or Kyle I guess -- will you all be here? Or do I need to get in touch with you in advance??"

"I don't expect to be going anywhere else, and at least one of the clone patrol will be here with me most of the time," Alex replied.

"Speaking of getting in touch..." Ava rushed over and got a little scrap of paper for Liz. "There's a pager number on there, and some useful code sequences to punch into it to send us messages. Not sure how quickly we'd be able to get back to a phone, but one of Rath or I will get the message if you place a call."

"Okay." Liz hugged Alex goodbye, and hugged Ava too, and somewhat awkwardly thumped Rath on the shoulder. "I won't be staying away long, believe me."

----------

Michael was having difficulty steering the Granolith cone through the swamp, something that, quite possibly, no-one else had ever tried to do before. Even though the device seemed to have lift to spare, he wasn't at all sure about taking to the air considering that some kind of alien hurricane was about to bear down on them at any moment. On the other hand, staying in contact with the ground was causing its own set of problems, since the 'ground' here was a mix of slimy water, bars and ridges of earth, and stands of vegetation and trees popping up in the most unlikely places. So far, he had tried to make straightforward progress as much as possible by staying in contact with the water, and clear of the other terrain features, but this was becoming more difficult... they had already crashed jarringly through two thin strips of woods.

"That storm-head seems to be getting closer," Tess warned them as snidely as she well could under the circumstances.

"What? Impossible, at this speed," Michael scoffed.

"Umm, I think she's right Michael," Isabel clarified. "It isn't catching up to us, but more storm seems to be developing, closer than the storm that was already there. If that makes any sense."

Unfortunately, it kind of did. Michael groaned and tried to keep their makeshift vehicle stable after it bumped into a bar of solid earth, sticking up out of the water. "If that trick keeps up, there's no way we'll be able to make it to shelter in time."

"Not... not the way we're going," Isabel repeated, an odd tone in her voice. Michael realized that she was connecting to the Granolith even more deeply than he was, tuning into it's sensors of the surroundings and trying to co-ordinate a mass of data into a possible answer. "The weather patterns, they're only moving in this direction. To either side... I, I think that there might be some kind of artificial stormbreakers set up. If we proceed at an angle, we might be able to get out of the path at least. And maybe rendezvous with one of the search parties."

Michael considered it. "Worth a try. What's the best heading??"

"Umm... try that way." She pointed about fifty-five degrees to the left of his current course. (Wow, geometry class must've finally stuck that last time - he was actually thinking in degrees instead of 'one sixth of a circle' or whatever.) He turned the Granolith accordingly, and gave it a little elevation and all the speed it could get. This was kinduv their last chance to avoid the brunt of the hurricane, or whatever it was.

The winds hit them, and some kind of weird rain that itched a little on Michael's skin and seemed to develop a flaky residue, but it didn't really hurt, and very obviously things were worse behind them, and getting better as they fought out of the path. Michael noticed some kind of odd little squat machines installed on high ground every few hundred yards or so... were these the source of the storm break?? They didn't seem to affect the Granolithmobile much, except for maybe a tiny bit of drag that Michael could be imagining, but they could manipulate the air patterns a lot differently than a very large and massive alien relic, (and the hybrids clinging to it any way that they could.)

"Angle back the way we were going before, Michael," Isabel suggested once they were clearly out of the entire storm except for a few stray wind gusts. Michael reoriented once again, and it didn't take long before he noticed something about delivery van-sized, driving along a patch of solid ground. Then he realized that the 'patch' was actually the end of the marsh, some kind of grassy terrain dotted with inhuman shrubs.

He hardly had time to think about his response before the passengers of the 'van' had clearly caught sight of them too... it turned to move closer, though not quite intercept his course. Michael slowed down, and when they were about forty yards away the van came to a stop and several people came out.

Michael stopped too, looking for every detail he could. This was, after all, the first time that they got a look at alien individuals on their home turf, not wearing humans skins or whatever to protect themselves from Earth air. They looked almost disappointingly normal... a little on the short and skinny side, compared to the people Michael was more familiar with. Oh, and their skin, that of the first few individuals that he saw at least, was blue to blueish-gray tones. They had hair that was worn long and loose in the back, black hair, vibrant red hair, (fire engine red, not orange-brown like natural human red hair,) and a kind of a yellow-ish green hair. Face and body structure seemed very subtly different from true human, but very similar.

He pulled the Granolith carefully closer and then set it down, a little awkwardly, so that it would stay stable without the lifting circuit active. Then he scrambled down, making sure that the 'key' was still secure on his pocket chain, and walked towards them. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael could see Isabel following him. He waved at the colonists. "Hi."

"Zabba frequin jjo va vaa dee?" one of them said in confusion.

**Oh, boy. We kinda forgot about this part, didn't we??**

------------

"Liz, where have you been??" Maria called as her best friend hurried through the back door of the Crash. "Clara and I have been just swamped since the dinner rush started!"

"Ummm..." Liz looked around, put her antennae back on, and picked her order book up from where it was sitting on a counter in the back room. She was still in her waitress uniform. "You, you would not believe me if I told you, so let's just get to work."

Maria frowned, not at all satisfied with that evasion, but things were too busy to try to squeeze anything more out of Liz directly, so Maria let things sit as they were. She watched Liz as she started rushing around, delivering food, taking new orders, and ringing up bills. And as Maria watched Liz, over the course of the following two hours or so, and exchanged quick small talk with her whenever there was a break, she was hit with a surprising series of revelations.

FIrst off, Liz was *happy.* There was a kind of supressed joy, something that had made nearly everything all right with her world, and that she was trying, for the moment to hide. But Liz was someone who tended, fundamentally, to wear her heart on her sleeve, (her participation in secret alien conspiracies notwithstanding,) and she couldn't entirely hide this thing, whatever it was, from someone who had known her for more than twelve years. It didn't seem to be anything romantic, as far as that went, or anything involving Max. Something had changed a little bit more fundamentally.

Maria weighed that puzzle as she tended to her own tables, still stealing glances at Liz as often as she could, and suppressed a groan after three different tables asked her, (well, some person at each of the tables asked her,) if she'd reccommend the will smith burger or the new martian probes basket. (That was chicken fingers under an amazingly corny name.)

Could it be that Isabel and Michael were back?? No, that wouldn't explain Liz's reaction... first of all, because she would have whispered the news to Maria first thing when she got in... Maria was certain of that much. At least, there was no reason she could think of that Liz would keep Michael's return a secret from her. And Maria also didn't think that news like that would account for the full depth of Liz's hidden joy... sure, she would be reassured and happy that they were back, but it wouldn't be world-changing news to her.

And then, it hit Maria exactly what would be world-changingly joyful news to Liz, and the shock of the moment nearly made her drop a tray of drinks. (There was a little spillage onto the tray before she had stablized everythng, but that wasn't nearly as the tumblers getting entirely upended on the floor of course.) She quickly gave the customers their drinks, asked if everything was fine and if there was anything else they needed, and quickly rushed out into the parking lot to try and put her thoughts in order.

Did Liz think that Alex was... was *back*?? As in back from the dead, or that his death had been some horrible misunderstanding or hoax that she had now seen through?? Maria could understand the temptation to entertain an idea like that, of course, and had had daydreams of Alex coming back, but in more rational moments she recognized those for frank denial. Nobody should have to come to terms with the pointless death of a brilliant, sensitive seventeen-year old, but the facts were facts and eventually had to be faced up to. Lord knew that they had found more than enough facts to establish the circumstances of Alex's death... and Liz had been the one to lead that campaign.

Well, she had been trying to find some sort of meaning in Alex's death, and the final answers had been nearly as degrading and insulting as the early stories about a freak car accident or suicide, Maria decided. She hadn't even been able to indulge in any daydreams of payback, after finding out that the culprit had been Tess, because the circumstances of the other girl's pregnancy, (and who the father of her child was,) had forced them all to, essentially, let her off scot-free. Michael and Isabel would be looking for some sort of appropriate situation to place her in, but their choices would probably be limited enough that any desire for Tess to suffer wouldn't be an important criterion... not compared to the security of the baby at least.

So, had Liz suddenly had some sort of breakdown, so overwhelmed by her grief about Alex's death that she had slipped solidly back into a strange form of denial? Or, was it just possible that there was something that they had all missed... some answer that could bring their dear friend back to them??

Maria hardly knew whether she should dare to hope.

So she went back inside and started to fetch alien-themed desserts for tables five and seven.

------------

Isabel shared a blank, terrified look with Michael. They were facing seven aliens now, each of whom had said one or two sentences in their language, and which neither of them knew what to make of. How could they have missed this? Well, they had had only about twenty seconds to plan this particular incarnation of the plan, and that helped. But even back when all four of them had been planning to go directly home to Antar, it had occured to nobody that they didn't know how to speak the language... and that nobody there would know how to speak English. (Not, at least, unless a Skin or somebody else who had gone undercover on Earth had returned to the homeworld, and if so they would probably have been working for Kivar and not to be trusted.)

"Arrgh shclee tavvravar...." The new voice speaking in alien-ese was Tess, and she went at it for quite a while. Isabel's blood nearly froze in her veins. If Tess could speak their language, she could tell the natives any sort of tall tale, and make sure to plant the seeds of distrust about Michael and Isabel themselves. At such time as independent translation could be sorted out, (starting from the traditional 'point and say name' technique or something like that,) the damage would be done, and Tess would be firmly in charge. She might even be able to convince them to take the Granolith key away from Michael and give it to her, and then she could re-launch it, (after the one-day ignition sequence again,) and jet back to Kivar, giving him the one thing that would consolidate his power.

How was Tess doing it?? Had Nasedo taught her fluency in Antarian, but not been able to have time for the written text of the language?? (If she had known how to read it, she wouldn't have needed Alex's help with the book... always assuming that was in Antarian script.) As Isabel watched, Tess awkwardly shimmied down off of the cone herself, keeping one hand in contact with it as she carried on a dialog with the native leader.

The granolith -- maybe that was it!! It had already shown them a number of unique powers since they had landed... maybe it was allowing Tess to speak the alien language. Fiercely, she scrambled back to touch the cone herself, realizing that she had to figure out what Tess and the others were talking about as soon as possible.

"...planet called Earth... how to explain... incredibly backwards, and... maybe you heard the..." Sequences of translated words were shooting into Isabel's mind, along with rules about how to interpret the word order in the original language grammar. She frowned, trying to get a full sense of what was being said as quickly as possible. Was Tess trying to sell them out? She'd pretty much have to be, wouldn't... "--how the royal four were... died and sent off someplace else to grabble grak froxx?"

One of the aliens, purple skin and a ridiculous kind of chartreuse mane falling halfway down his back, made a circular head motion. "Grarrk, we have heard about some of these things, but never ffliznfped to meet varggra of you. This is a remote world, not of much klinntashin. Why have you come?"

Isabel opened her mouth, ready to try 'speaking' in the alien language using the granolith, but then realized she couldn't be sure the connection would work well enough that way. If she was able to speak alien words, but garble the meaning, she might horribly offend these people, which was the last thing they needed. And Tess beat her to it.

"Well, you'll want to chat about these two about it, once they get hip to the lingo. I think she understands some of what we're saying, now," Tess replied, pointing at Isabel. "Myself, well, I'm the hostage. Pregnant with a baby that I shouldn't have gotten... it really does get pretty complicated. They brought me here to try and deliver my child into safe hands... and bring back the... umm, our spaceship, kinda."

Isabel blinked in surprise. Tess had played straight and not even tried to torpedo them, apparently, or at least she'd changed her mind after realizing that Iz would catch her at it. And she hadn't even 'accidentally' let slip about the real nature of the Granolith, which could be a tricky point until they found the right people to reveal it to.

"Umm, hi," Isabel said slowly, and it was clear that this far, at least, the translation effect was working. Michael had realized what was going on at some point, and had his own palm against the cone surface too. "I'm Isabel, this is Michael, and you've already met Tess."

"My name is Keryel Gorn, of the Vvantas settlement," an alien woman replied. "There is much we have to talk about, but perhaps not here. There will be particulate rain that gets through the storm breakers, in the height of such a Vvurcane, and it would be better to strike out for shelter as soon as we can. Is your... your craft able to carry you any further??"

"Yah," Michael replied. "You guys want to lead the way??"

"That will be... acceptable," she replied, bending her head and upper body backwards for a moment. Isabel sighed, realizing that she'd have to learn an entirely new system of body language to figure out what was really going on around here.

----------

Maria hardly let Liz lock the dining room's front door and flip the 'open/closed' sign around in the window before jumping on her. "Okay, girlfriend, spill it, what's going on, and does it have anything to do with Alex??" It belatedly occurred to Liz that Maria had been so insistent to Clara and Mark that they could leave early, after working so hard that day, and that the two of them would be fine closing up by themselves. She had wanted privacy for this conversation.

"Actually, yes. I thought it would be better to tell everybody at once, tomorrow, but you kinduv do have a right to know." Liz dropped down onto one of the booth benches. "Only, I'm not quite sure how to start."

"You think Alex is alive??" Maria prompted under her breath.

"How... how did you g-- you didn't meet him too, did you? Because he didn't say anything about..."

"No, of course I haven't met him!" Maria burst out, and then caught herself. "Sorry, Liz, but even an unpleasant truth is still true; you know that, my pretty little scientist girl. You... you saw them bury him, and you know that Alex would never be able to pull off digging himself up that far. Not enough upper body strength." Maria caught herself. "Sorry, that's really a joke in poor taste, but I have to admit I'm not quite sure how else to react here. As far as how I could tell you were thinking that... I dunno, I guess I just put it together. You came in here as if everything was suddenly right with the world again, and certainly that's the only thing that would have such an effect -- on any of us."

"Okay," Liz replied. "What they buried, what they pulled out of that car, it wasn't him. You can accept that that much is conceivable, right??" WIth an imperative gesture, she waved Maria over to the booth, and when the other girl reluctantly sat down, Liz dropped her voice to a thin whisper. "Aliens can do that. Given their powers over the molecular structure of matter, why not? Find something, or some things, that are animal and dead and about the right weight, and shape shift them until they look exactly like a particular, dead, teenaged boy. None of us ever really looked at *it* that closely, at least, I didn't. I don't think you could bear to either. If someone could get the face more or less right, nobody would really even worry if one arm was a little too long or the skin wasn't quite the right shade. It's not like trying to impersonate a *living* person that way, and we know at least one alien who could do that too."

"Okay, okay, umm, I guess I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one," Maria insisted. "First off, which alien? Alex obviously couldn't do this himself, and none of the usual suspects seem to fit. Max, Michael, or Isabel would never try to fake Alex's death. Tess certainly wouldn't, not considering that just trying to COVER UP her involvement in the mess was so much trouble for her. Nasedo is toast, and even if there are skins or whatnot lurking around, they don't seem to have anything to gain by it." She sighed. "And, well... you say you've met Alex, Liz?? Like, today? How can you be sure that you weren't getting mindwarped, or shaking hands with a shifter??"

"There are a few obvious suspects you left out on your list, Maria," Liz pointed out. "The dupes, who are still unaccounted for, and at least one of whom has a motive to help a friend of mine, though it's actually a lot more complicated than that. As far as knowing that it's not a trick... well, he knew things that only Alex and I, and I guess maybe you, know. I didn't tell any evil aliens, and I think that I would remember if I'd been mindraped for those secrets. How about you??"

For a second, Maria was actually tempted to make up some wild story just to try and puncture Liz's certainty, but she knew that would be pointless. If she knew Liz well enough to guess what had happened, Liz knew her well enough to see through a lie on the spur of the moment like that. "No, I don't think anybody found out that kind of stuff from me." She sighed. "You're that sure it was Alex? Fine, then I wanna meet him too."

"Sure, fine," Liz agreed.

"Right now," Maria added, and Liz blinked in shock. "As soon as we can get this place locked up!"

----------

"Nice to meet all three of you," the tall, blue-faced Antarian said once the introductions were complete. "Welcome to Vvantas settlement, Stellynfrus 3. All that we have built here, consider yours to use as one of us."

Michael nodded vaguely. They were trying to get by without constant contact with the Granolith at this point, having figured out how to 'download' an Antarians basic vocabulary pack into their minds, and it also seemed that he was able to remember the new words and usage rules much more easily than ever before. But some things were still a little confusing. The last sentence that the settlement leader had said seemed vaguely to be some kind of ritual declaration of hopitality, but if there was a required reply, Michael didn't know it.

"Thanks, that's very kind of you," Isabel replied in Antarian. She had always been better at basic human courtesy than Michael, and translating it literally seemed like their best bet at this point. "Gird... do you mind if I stick with calling you Gird, by the way, instead of trying to remember and correctly pronounce the whole mouthful."

"Gird will be alright, Isabel" he replied with a good-humored outward breath. Gird didn't seem to have any problems with their names, but then he was just dealing with three strangers and a slightly strange situation, instead of a strange land full of strange people, strange language, strange gestures, strange plants and animals, strange machines, strange buildings... and so on and so forth. "I realize that you're still hardly started getting used to our land, but there are a few realities of the situation that need to be addressed as quickly as possible."

Uh-oh, this sounded bad. "Kivar??" Michael asked.

Gird nodded. "By unfortunate chance, there was a starship loyal to him in the area when you approached our star. Just a small patrol class vessel, a little over three gilocs away. But they have to have noticed the Granolith's approach, and we've detecting a shock wave that probably indicates they're heading for our planet at maximum speed."

"Umm, what was that unit of distance, by the way?" I asked.

He blinked in surprise. "A giloc... it's one of the standard units for interstellar distances. It... our people generally measure fractions of a circle in units of one five hundredth, by the way, which is a 'kev.' The distance from the Antarian sun at which a theoretical star would be observed to vary against the background constellations by one kev, as Antar orbits its sun, is defined as a giloc."

"Ohh," Isabel muttered. So, it's basically their variation of a parsec, Michael thought to himself, and probably a little bit smaller, assuming that the distance of Antar from its sun was about the same as Earth's. "Do you know what the warship will do? Will you be able to hold out if they attack or send troops to invade the settlement??"

"In reversing order, 'for some time,' 'yes,' and 'I have a pretty good idea.'" All three of the hybrids took a moment to sort out that response, inverted from what they would be used to in yet another cultural difference. "A ship like that isn't really equipped for atmospheric flight, or planetary bombardment... they could probably find a few things to throw down at us that'll blow up, but nothing that would breach our defenses. A landing party, on the other hand, is another matter."

"Kivar has modified all of these Ch'nar class scout ships so that they're equipped to go after rebels out here on the borders," Gird continued wearily. "There'll be several aerodynamic shuttles in what used to be the cargo bays, and some nasty land assault vehicles. On the other hand, we are not entirely unarmed either. I expect that we'll be able to hold them off for several days or more, but not to overrun or drive off all the enemy troops."

"So it'll be a standoff, for that long," Tess said musingly.

"A siege," Michael corrected absently. "And what happens then?"

"Frankly, I'm not really sure, because after a few days we and that patrol ship won't be the only players in this showdown, not with the... well, the five of you up for grabs," Gird admitted with a sigh. He started counting them off. "One, two, three, four for the baby, and Granilith makes five. If that commander realized what he was after, he might have already sent word ahead to the Fleet base at Mardarrha, seven and a half Gilocs distant -- Kivar's closest outpost. Myself, I've sent words to the other settlements here on our world, not that the support they can offer is that much. Also I sent off a carrier wave signal to my contact in the Rebellion network, but I'm not sure how quickly they'll be able to respond in force."

"Sounds nasty," Isabel said, shuddering.

"We don't want to start a war here," Michael said, shaking his head angrily. "If there was a way that Tess and the baby could be safe here, we might just blast back off in the big G, heading back for earth. Nothing else can catch it in warp flight, right??"

"Indeed," Gird replied, nodding his head. (Had he picked tha gesture up from the three of them already?) "Somehow the Granilith is able to achieve kinetic warp quanta several levels above our best speedships. But Kivar's forces would search every cup of mud on the planet. They'd realize that it was unlikely for you to risk the Granilith simply to come here for a quick consultation. The possibility that one of you had been left behind would be too obvious."

"Could the other rebels take Tess away??" Isabel asked. Tess seemed more than a little frustrated to hear her future discussed as if she had no say in it, but she simply sulked, realizing that no-one would be glad to hear her opinions at this point.

Gird brightened visibly at that, (literally, the color of his skin changing at a moment's notice.) "Possibly, if they could arrange for a sub-ether shielded vessel -- one that Kivar's people couldn't track."

"A cloaking device??" Michael couldn't help but ask.

"Umm... what does that mean?"

"Umm, sorry Gird, it's an earth pop culture reference. A kind of technology that hides a spaceship from all observers and sensor devices."

"Umm, yes -- more or less." Gird still seemed confused by the reference... possibly he hadn't understood the full meaning of 'cultural reference' and was wondering if humans had more space technology than he had thought.

"Is there anything we can do to help you get ready??" Isabel asked.

TO BE CONTINUED...