The loroi warband that had so eagerly stormed downwards into the "Soia Weapons Cache" earlier was rather more 'subdued' on their way back up. Sanzai was clipped, muted, even without the suppressive effects of the walls around them.

For her part, Talon felt like that one time she'd had to gingerly bring her fighter in with a leak punched through both her suit and cockpit, kinetic-dampening liquid all boiled away. It had taken a whole day before she could keep food down, and five more before she could fly again.

If her mind recovered from its feeling of bewildered unsteadiness now any faster than her stomach had then, she'd switch ranks with Spiral.

It turned out that there were ten of the aliens, now, once the rest had filed into the command center after locating Spiral and her team. The news that Spiral had gone with a group out in search of Talon and her two soroin was heartwarming, especially since they had not run into Shells along the way.

Although if their 'first contact' with the humans had been as fraught as it had been for Talon…

"You are certain that the Enemy will be unable to restore this anti-ship weapon?" asked Stillstorm. Talon's 'status' as the first loroi to actually talk to these new aliens meant that she had been roped in to walking close behind the senior officers as they conversed with the human Colonel.

"Yes." The alien raised one finger. "For one, they would need to override a software lock on the entire system. Software whose like has not been seen for a quarter-million years, from what you have told me." he raised a second finger. "Two, even if they did get past the software lock, if anybody now tries to bring the main reactor tap online… the fireball would be visible from orbit. A catastrophic rupture of a slipspace linkage is the sort of event that devours starships."

"That is comforting to hear." Tempo said, as the group topped the ramp into the cargo bay, on the surface. "I do not know why the Enemy attacked you once they inadvertently deactivated your stasis-sleep, but I am not surprised that they did so."

Colonel Jardin chuckled lowly. "They probably thought we were you, just like your pilot did."

And how was Talon supposed to have known that the loroi-shaped warriors that rescued her were actually ancient aliens that just happened to look near-identical to them? She still had trouble believing it!

Apparently Tempo had had a similar thought, as she asked "Is it known why your species does look so similar to us? I can sympathize with the Umiak for ignoring the truly quite minor physical differences, especially in the confusion of battle."

"Your guess is as good as mine, Parat Tempo. If the UNSC ever knew, they never told me. And if the Soia ever knew, they never told Tempest." He snorted. "Not that people — on either side — ever lacked for creative ideas to explain it. I've heard everything from intelligent design to convergent evolution to ancient aliens. Nobody's yet come up with an answer that sticks." He paused at the threshold of the cargo bay, just barely illuminated by the sunlight. "And now? I doubt anyone ever will."

The group made their way towards the distant, hidden dropship. Soroin fanned out to screen the perimeter, but Talon could feel that many of them were simply glad to put some distance between themselves and the scary new aliens.

For Talon, the sucking mud that had seemed so tortuous on the way in was now drowned out by the elation of being able to once more feel the presence of her sisters-in-arms clearly. No more of that cursed Soia metal forged into claustrophobia-inducing corridors that twisted to and fro, hiding each loroi from her arms-sister's sight and mind!

She slowed her steps, dropping back from where the Colonel continued to speak with Stillstorm and the Mizol, and moved closer to one of the other humans. The only other human who it seemed could speak Trade properly… or at least the only other one who was willing to.

And frankly, the one who seemed most interesting to her. "Your Colonel spoke that you are a pilot, yes?"

"That's, uh, right." he said. "Ensign second-class Alexander Jardin, UNSC Naval Air Service."

"And I am Tenoin Arrir Nesin." She parsed his strange terms as best she could. "'Naval Air Service.' That is perhaps trans-atmospheric craft?"

"Mostly, yes. Whatever the Service demands."

"And the Colonel is your father?" At least, she thought that was what the alien had said.

"Uncle. Dad is — was — in the Navy." He looked over at Talon, face clearly visible through the transparent visor of his helmet. "I followed Dad rather than Uncle Pierre. Family tradition and all that. Besides, Navy dress uniforms look better than ODST grays."

She looked up and down his own very gray uniform. It was slimmer and less blocky than those the other humans wore, but… "I think maybe there is little to choose between those two." For one thing, everybody's legs right now were gray-brown up to the knees from all this cursed mud.

He laughed, and repeated with a smile "Dress uniforms! You know, what you wear for formal occasions, not deployment. Unless that searing-orange getup is all you have."

Now Talon looked down at her own armor. The armor of a Tenoin. The armor that she had been proud to earn, up until this— no, actually, she was still proud of it! "It is as 'searing' as the beams of our lasers!" She was far from a poet — had never even gotten to meet a poet, thanks to that stupid incident at her diral graduation — but she hoped that that sounded right. Spoken language was hard!

The alien's smile shifted, now seeming more genuine. "You're a stick-jockey as well?"

Talon's mind ran through a few loops trying to create an image out of the strange phrase. Then gave up. "Maybe yes? I will be piloting the transport that we are walking to."

"I also!" announced Spiral, jogging up on Talon's right and looking across her. "I am called Tenoin Narrat Nonnos! I fly also, keep this tail-wag from breathing dirt into engines!"

{That was one time!} Talon sent in exasperation. {And what rot-sniffing idiot of a gallen put air intakes on the sides of a dropship, anyways?}

She also noted the… inaccurate assumption that her diral-sister had made about her motivation. {And I am only interested in what this alien pilot has seen and flown. Imagine alien fighter-craft, suitable for a war of the scale his uncle described!} She hoped that the honest enthusiasm of the second phrase would cover for the less-than-entirely-truthful side-bands that wrapped the first.

{You did not notice at all that he is a male, and also closer to… 'right-size' than his fellow aliens? You really are hopeless!} Spiral gave her a wink and a grin, before speaking out loud to the younger Jardin. "In cockpit is room for three, and rest of craft not so much room. Maybe Ensign will ride with us up front? Tell how ancient warriors flew fighters?"

For all her sisterly teasing, the genuine curiosity in Spiral's voice and mind was clear enough.

"I… doubt that will be a problem." Jardin responded, looking forwards at his uncle. The Colonel must have overheard Spiral's suggestion, because he glanced back over his shoulder and gave a short nod, before returning to his conversation with Stillstorm and Tempo.

"Most fortunate!" Talon said. "What sort of craft did you fly mostly?"

"I was trained on bombers first. But by the time I got to the Fleet, they needed dropship pilots more than anything. So I ended up cross-training as a Seagull pilot while serving aboard the Hell by Compass. Four combat drops before I was assigned to the Furies; two more since."

"'Furies'?" came another voice, as the group's Listel Tozet walked up on his other side.

"Uh, 'Frenchie's Furies.' Formally, 'Gamma-Six Heavy'. That's us. Uncle's ODST team, the best of the best of the marines." He went quiet for a few solon. "They were put together out of the remains of a few 'depleted' squads for operation RED CARD. That was the mission to, uh… 'neutralize' a Soia leader, preferably Tempest herself. See, a 'Fury' is an ancient human myth: a fictional creature that symbolizes vengeance, and the bloodier the better. And they're all women. So when Uncle's unit put together a volunteer team of mostly female ODSTs to set out on what was expected to be a one-way mission, all for the sake of some very personal vengeance for the Outer Colonies? The name stuck, even when replacements started diluting the original team." He paused for a solon. "Oh and, uh, 'Frenchie' was Uncle's old callsign."

"These are the same warriors that accompanied your Colonel and Tempest, later? And you said that these Furies were 'Creatures of vengeance.'" Beryl mused, fixing Talon and Spiral with a meaningful look before turning her gaze to the Ensign. "The nearest Trade term would be 'Bedein.'"

Right, the Bedein that had been said to accompany the legend version of Tempest and aid her in her battles. The mythical, vengeful sea-spirits. Talon had always thought they were just a part of the story added to keep pre-diral girls paying attention, an untruthful exaggeration or — even worse — pure fiction.

...

Wait, was she talking to one of the actual Bedein right now!?

"I would know what means 'Frenchie'!" asked Spiral, puncturing the bubble of seriousness that was threatening to envelop the conversation. "Also 'callsign.'"

"It's a play on our last name. The name is from a region of Earth called 'France,' but our family's lived in northern California for centuries. Uh, those two regions are very far apart."

"And so this name then is meant to be humorous? Insulting?" Beryl asked.

"A good callsign is usually mostly humorous. Only a little bit insulting, and I think Uncle got used to it decades ago."

"Then it is like a diral-name!" Talon realized. At Jardin's blank look, she explained "That is the spoken name given to a warrior by her diral-sisters. It is picked in first for the most not-proud moment of a loroi's diral time, but also most commonly for a memory that is funny."

Spiral added "It is most always replaced much soon by real spoken name at end of diral trials. But diral-sisters never forget name first given!" She smirked teasingly at Talon, sending her a quick burst of memories recounting each time that Talon had fallen off of that top-heavy death-trap of a boat their diral had built. "As example, 'Plunger' here secretly wanted to be submarine pilot, it seems!"

"'Seed-head!'" Talon shot back with a laugh, sending the image she had once managed to find of a pre-diral Spiral standing in a horizon-spanning field of misesa grain on her birth-world, eyes closed in an utterly un-warrior-like image of pastoral tranquility amidst the rolling hills.

Beryl interrupted the playful sisterly feud. "What is your callsign, Alexander Jardin?"

"It's uh, 'Fireball.'" he replied, sheepishly.

The three loroi exchanged confused looks. "That seems to be a complement." said Talon.

"Its sound is fierce!" added Spiral.

Jardin grinned at them and explained, "Take it from me: always check that your Seagull's afterburner hasn't been slowly leaking fuel the whole time while waiting in a parking orbit during a mission. Type-F compound is both fuel and oxidizer. My crew chief made me reapply the paint to the aft of my bird by hand."

The three loroi broke out into laughter, joined a solon later by the human pilot. He added "If you think that story's good, try this one: My squadron leader at that time had gotten her callsign from her flight school days. She woke up in the middle of the night to a Highland spider crawling across her bed and onto the wall. So she grabs a hammer from her field-maintenance kit and goes at it; kills the spider but cracks a water pipe in the wall, hosing down the entire cadet dorm room at two in the morning."

Talon nodded in appreciation. "A good warrior's instinct. But… what is a 'spider'?"

"Hold on, I've got a picture here." Ensign Jardin dug out his datapad from a pocket and tapped at it for a few moments. "We asked her about the story once, and she shared this:" He held up the pocket computer, the three loroi leaning in to look over his shoulder.

A grinning human woman — and they really looked loroi-like without that bulky Helljumper armor on! — crouched in a thumb's-width of water, lit by the flash of whatever device had captured the image. Held across her chest, just underneath a series of printed alien letters spelling 'RAWLEY', was a red-smeared metal hammer. And spread-eagled in front of her, completely flattened, was this… horrible bug-thing with spindly legs that must have been as wide as her arms could reach!

"Fascinating!" said Beryl. "It is perhaps in part like a large, exoskeletal beimish. Are they venomous?"

"Don't know. I grew up on Earth and trained on Holdout, so Reach's wildlife wasn't anything I ever encountered outside of stories."

Spiral said with a shudder "It certain looks like something Perreinid! Maybe this planet 'Reach' is now called 'Perrein?'"

Beryl sent a cautionary warning, but it arrived too late.

The smile sagged off of the human's face. "Well, is this 'Perrein' of yours a glassed, lifeless desert devoid of all surface life?" He looked at Spiral, who lowered her eyes and glanced aside.

Right… probably not a good idea to remind the humans that every world they had ever known was burned to ashes. Talon cast about for something else to talk about. These humans were strange, yes, from their loroi-like appearance to letting males of all people be warriors, but they were warriors. It was not right to make them dwell on past defeats.

Besides, every instinct in Talon's mind was screaming at her to reassure the obviously-saddened male. "Well... it should be nice for you to see the interior side of a cockpit once more, yes?"

Now Beryl turned her attention on Talon. {You wish for him to join you in the cockpit?} Her sanzai was accompanied by an emphasis on just how little room there was in that compartment… and a hint of suspicion as to Talon's motives.

Not her, too!

{He has already accepted.} Talon explained. {And it will be good for him to do pilot-things again, or at least see them being done.}

Spiral joined in {There can be room for four in the cockpit if you are interested...} along with a mental image of the Listel Tozet pressed up against the lanky human's side in the cramped space behind the crew seats.

Talon quickly repeated {We really do just want to hear how an alien pilot thinks, how he does things.} Her sanzai would convey her honesty… at least as to her own motives.

Her diral-sister appended {And maybe later he can show us other things!} Thankfully she didn't include any mental images with that sending, but it was impossible to miss Spiral's laughter-lined — and as crude as a Donei detair abbess! — 'implication.'

Talon knew Spiral well enough to feel that she was simply joking — well, almost entirely joking — but the flare of irritation from the Listel showed that she 'knew' no such thing. {You are Tenoin warriors, not diral-girls to be distracted by her first sighting of a male.}

Even Spiral seemed to have realized that she had overstepped a boundary. {There is no need to be concerned, listel tozet. I was only joking, with no intent to start anything dishonorable.} Her sending was clear, open and far more formal than was normal for the Maia-born ball of playful energy that was Spiral.

Beryl accepted the truth lining the Narrat's sanzai. {See that you remember it.}

In the few heartbeats that their conversation had taken, Jardin had barely begun to answer. Talon took a moment to remember what she'd actually asked him aloud — how did aliens get anything done with verbal speech alone and no sanzai? "-ill be interesting to see what you've come up with while we've been, uh, 'asleep.'"

"Thruster intakes." Talon called out aloud, for the human's benefit.

"Clean!" Replied Spiral.

"Fuel mixture."

"Optimal."

"Flight controls."

"Four-by-four!"

Talon ran her fingers down the control panel, toggling each system online. The comfort of routine helped distract her from the warmth radiated by the alien behind her, separated only by the thin backing of her pilot's chair. Dropships were not exactly as comfortable as larger shuttles could afford to be. At least there was room for her to take off her helmet and set it aside — a luxury that only Tenoin veterans of far too many fighter-sorties would fully appreciate.

Spiral had, if anything, exaggerated: there really wouldn't have been room for a fourth person in the cockpit, not without actually compromising the ability of the flight crew to man their stations. With Talon at the pilot's controls and Spiral at the copilot's station, that left the human standing so close behind Talon that his breath tickled her hair.

It was… not easy to concentrate her thoughts with the alien right there. Not really so much for him being a male as him being older than anything on Taben. He had asked only a few questions earlier and was now being politely quiet while she worked, but that didn't help her nervousness much.

Maybe she hadn't thought this invitation through all the way.

Carefully packing her thoughts away, she sent {Lashret, we are prepared for flight.}

{Very well.} came the instant reply. {You have the coordinates?}

{Affirmative, Lashret. Approximate time to arrival is eight thousand solons.}

{Then depart immediately. Inform me if any information needing my attention becomes available during flight.} She terminated the message, Talon catching only the faintest impression of the parallel conversation the Torrai was still carrying on with the senior Jardin.

Which was doubtlessly interesting as well, but Talon certainly did not envy any of the loroi packed gut-to-butt in the troop bay. Between the original cargo, sixty loroi — of whom five were injured and needed more space — and now ten humans, the dropship was loaded well beyond what it had been sized to carry. Fortunately only in volume rather than mass, which simplified Talon's job as pilot.

The Hydra lifted off, thruster wash blasting plumes of mud high into the air as the camouflage nets retracted into their mountings atop the fuselage. Angling the engine nacelles forwards, the Hydra slowly accelerated forwards, staying low and slow just above the treeline. They should be all-but-impossible for the Shells to notice, but especially now with their new passengers Talon was not going to take chances.

Once the craft had reached a comfortable cruising state, Talon turned her head slightly to one side and asked "Perhaps maybe it seems similar to that craft you mentioned flying?"

"UNSC Seagulls. They're a good bit smaller and more nimble, but couldn't fit quite all the people you've got crammed in down below." He chuckled. "Or up here."

The dropship rounded a tall mountain — even with what she'd recently learned about the Soia, she had to respect their dedication to aesthetics: such beautiful nature… on a superweapon? — and dove down to skim the sea in front of them.

A thin bead of sweat crept down the back of Talon's scalp, slipping underneath her suit's inner lining. The Hydra's thermal dissipaters and radar absorbent design should keep them off of Shell sensors, but against the solid backdrop of the ocean there was minimal ground clutter for their reduced — but not entirely gone! — signature to hide in.

Ensign Jardin didn't seem to be worried, as he looked out of the side of the cockpit window. "Whatever ship that was that we shot down sure lit up a lot of places." Talon briefly glanced aside, noting the plumes of smoke rising from the impact sites of Tempest's wreckage.

Then the exact wording that the alien had used hit her.

"'You' shot down?" She asked, now glad of the distraction. A mirroring spike of consternation radiated from Spiral.

"The Bugs — 'Shells,' you called them — woke us up when they were searching down into the cryo bays. The ODSTs pushed them back and went hunting, and discovered that the STO firing systems were online… and that they were tracking this large alien destroyer barreling in, headed right for us. Looked pretty beat up; the Bugs must have engaged it already. The Bugs were evacuating the facility just as fast as their four legs could carry them. We saw that we couldn't get clear of the splash zone in time, so we trained the gun on the ship and held down the trigger. Burned it off-course while we ran back down to the lower levels to play it safe, wait out the impact." He turned his head to look down at Talon. "Whose ship was that?"

"Ours." Talon ground out, but her brief flare of anger dissipated almost immediately. The humans had had no way of knowing that Spiral's shuttle was leaving Tempest's wreck just as they fired; the crash and all the events since could not be held against them.

"Oh. Hell, I'm sorry to hear that, but she was headed right for us. We didn't recognize it as a loroi craft."

"Crashing into that weapon of yours was the idea." Talon explained. "The ship had already been hit by that cannon when the Shells were controlling it and was too crippled to leave the system, so Lashret Stillstorm set him on a collision course for the weapon's firing point."

"Good improvisation. And 'Stillstorm' is your commander? Red armor, blue hair, doesn't smile?"

"That is she!" Spiral said, adding in private sanzai to Talon {Definitely her!}

"Huh. Can't blame her for looking so angry. I'd be pissed too if my ship had gotten shot out from underneath me."

Talon chuckled, and broke into a soft laugh. A quick glance upwards showed Jardin looking back at her, eyebrows raised. She explained "The ship was named Tempest. I think maybe you can guess for whom it was named?"

"Huh." After several solon of his face frozen in shock, the human shook his head with a wry grin. "Small universe, I guess." He snorted. "But I am not going to be the one to tell uncle Pierre that he shot down 'Tempest'."

"That is to be the mizol's duty!" said Spiral, from her seat facing off to the side. The two tenoin shared a laugh, but Jardin didn't join. Did the loroi even have mizol equivalents, back in his era?

Perhaps not; the alien did not seem to get the joke. Indeed, when he spoke next his voice was serious. "She would have been proud to know that her memory lived on, applied to a warship."

For several solons, there was silence.

"What was she like?" asked Talon. She'd only been to the Vortex-class's bridge twice, but she certainly remembered the imposing mural just outside of it. To think that this alien leaning above her had actually known the fierce-looking loroi…

Jardin didn't answer for several solon, and Talon hoped that the question hadn't fished up an unhappy memory. "She was, uh, intimidating. I knew she had never been a very 'nice' person — she'd been the foremost warrior of the Soia Empire, of course, long before I was born — but the Wars had… 'sharpened' her."

So much for that hope. "But she and your uncle were pair-bonded. And he seems to be not so bad, himself."

Jardin snorted. "He's good at hiding it. He was ONI before he was transferred to the ODSTs after the raid that ended up 'rescuing' Tempest. Uncle Pierre hasn't told me about most of the things he did during the First War, but… I've heard the stories. I suspect he and Tempest saw something of themselves in each other."

"That is not uncommon for warriors of many years." Talon agreed somberly. "It is unusual for it to be female and male, but maybe this is not so for humanity?"

"The UNSC didn't have the luxury of caring what dangled between a soldier's legs, as long as they could hold a rifle or crew a ship." He made a peculiar snapping noise with his fingers. "Uh, of course, you wouldn't know. To put it briefly, human men and women are about equal parts of the species. Men are physically stronger and more aggressive, but those differences don't matter much compared to any of the combatants the Soia engineered."

And Talon was one of those 'combatants that the Soia engineered'. That thought was… less reassuring than it would have been only a day ago.

But on that note… "Your uncle said something earlier that I wish to know more of." Talon wracked her mind for the human's exact wording, but she was certainly no listel. "I think he said that only the Soia had 'mind powers.' Were loroi of that era in truth not able to use sanzai?" The thought was… uncomfortable.

"From what I know, yes." He replied. "Keep in mind that this was all decades before I was born. But the history vids all say — and Uncle agreed, when I asked him — that the Soia had created their warriors, their loroi, to be soldiers. Not commanders, not uh, 'leaders' at any meaningful scale. The ability to send messages between minds, and especially to read minds and affect them, was only granted to those that had been elevated to Soia form.

"A few loroi were built with the ability to manipulate higher-physics interactions; almost all of them were kept as the personal Guards of the Soia themselves." He paused for a moment. "I've been meaning to ask – two of the loroi in your group here wear what look a lot like amplifiers. Are there modern loroi who have such powers?"

Talon quickly sent a summary of the recent parts of the conversation to the Mizol Parat. It was far above Talon's rank to choose how much to tell this alien.

{That is safe to explain, Tenoin Arrir.} responded Tempo.

"Yes. There are the Teidar and Mizol castes, who can manipulate objects at a distance with their mind."

"Excellent. Looks like Halsey was wrong, for once." 'Satisfaction', of all things, was clear in his voice. "The Doc was never exactly sure if the modifications would stay effective across enough generations. But if they still work after a quarter-million years, I think we can call it a success."

"The Teidar were engineered? By humanity?" Talon wasn't sure she wanted to be the one to tell the imposing red-haired teidar down in the troop bay that particular bit of history.

"Uh, no, almost entirely by Tempest. But she was helped by the best minds the UNSC had left. We, uh, had our own 'bio-augmentation' programs during the Wars." He let out a small sigh. "I don't think any of them are left, not anymore. Guess the Helljumpers won that contest by default."

Talon frowned at the cryptic remark, but the Ensign did not elaborate. They were less than a thousand solons out from their target point, anyway. And dalid had shone upon them: no Shell contacts spotted ahead. "Is there a specific spot on this island that you wish to go?"

He took a moment to respond; maybe without sanzai the shift in the conversation was surprising to him? "Yeah, uh… the hangar's built into a cliff face, the one closest to the nearer rim of the Ring."

"And you think that your ship will still be able to work after all this time?"

Jardin chuckled. "Give the Soia a bit of credit, here — they didn't only build stasis chambers sized for people."

Talon and Spiral exchanged a shocked flurry of sanzai. "That is very impressive."

"The Soia were… well, let's just say that they almost earned the right to be as arrogant as they were."

The cliff face was… completely unremarkable. "You are most certain that it is here?"

"Yes. You'll need to transmit the code on the right frequency for the facility to open up." Jardin leaned further over her, looking down at the pilot's console. Paused. "...of course, it's base-8. Never could wrap my mind around that system." He sighed. "Here, this will be faster."

Before Talon could ask, his mind suddenly blazed into being, easily detectable at near-touching distance. It made the cockpit feel both more and less crowded at the same time: less crowded because he no longer felt like an inert bulkhead wall pressed against her back, and yet more crowded because she could now also feel his awareness of just how close-together the two of them were. How the tips of her hair tickled his chin as he leaned over, and—

She blocked out as much as she could, and focused on entering the commands at the forefront of his mind — not the 'exotic' color of her hair! — into the dropship's communications system.

Perhaps it was better that these humans normally kept their personal lotai-machines engaged. Their minds were chaotic compared to a normal, healthy loroi mind. Thoughts flying everywhere, jumping to the fore one moment and disappearing the next. Especially those thoughts that any good warrior would keep well-buried during duty. Although perhaps a male would not...

"Code entered and sent." Talon confirmed, thankful that vocal speech was easier to keep steady than was sanzai. "No immediate response."

"Give it a few solons." Jardin said, lotai thankfully sliding back into place. "The machine's older than any city in your Union, after all."

While they waited, Talon asked "If I may be told, how did humanity develop your lotai-machine?"

Jardin was silent for several solon. Just when Talon began to think that the alien wouldn't answer, he chuckled and spoke "It's another gift from Tempest. A gift to herself, really, more than anything. She said she got tired of having to block out the uh, 'disordered thoughts' of everyone around her. Spent months tinkering with amplifiers and a spare set of neural lace implants before she got it to work. Now she demands — demanded — that anyone working near her has to have a set installed."

Talon could see the appeal. The flight over would have been quite awkward, if she'd had to spend the whole time blocking out some of the thoughts which she'd faintly perceived lurking underneath Ensign Jardin's conscious mind. What was 'vanilla' anyways?

"Did you not say that she was a Warrior, not an Artificer?"

"Before she was elevated to Soia-form, yes. Afterwards, it didn't really matter. Council Soia are a rule unto themselves; they got the works when it came to the Empire's best enhancements, both physical and mental. There's really not much that they can't figure out, if they set their mind to it. And—" he cut himself off, as the cliff face in front of their hovering craft split open horizontally. "Ah, there we go."

At first, Talon thought that the cavernous bay within was empty. Everything was shadows, even as the light poured in from the side.

She frowned. There were shadows lurking even where nothing stood to cast the shadow.

"Be careful moving us in." Jardin advised. He dropped his lotai once more, and carefully 'pushed' — it seems humans could not actively send, sadly — the outline of the craft within to the forefront of his mind, easy to read. With that aid, Talon could suddenly resolve the outline of the deep-black ship. "That's very irreplaceable ONI technology. UNSC Did Ever Plummet Sound. Refit Winter-class light prowler, and our ticket out of here."

There was — barely — room in the hangar to set the dropship down off to the side. Set against the rounded bulk of the loroi craft, this ancient human vessel's sharp, sleek lines gave it a predatory look. Talon recalled Colonel Jardin's mention of 'ONI deep-strike teams' that had so terrified the Soia Empire that they recalled their foremost warrior to hunt them down. Neither human had explained just what this 'ONI' caste was, but from the descriptions of how they had devastated the Soia worlds and habitats, Talon could make a guess.

And this ship looked exactly like what she felt such warriors — no, such Bedein — would ride into battle. A ship built not for War… but for Revenge.

Talon and Spiral ran through the post-landing checklists, one corner of their minds tracking the flurry of sanzai that raced to and fro through the dropship as the other loroi exited and saw the vicious-looking human vessel. All agreed with Talon's first impression.

Ensign Jardin left while the two tenoin were still finishing the shut-down procedures. The cockpit felt much larger and less crowded… and also noticeably colder.

Spiral's flash of playful humor gave Talon only a brief warning before her diral-sister sent to her {One always feels cold and empty when morning comes and the male leaves your bed. Well, sometimes cold and pleasantly full. You'll learn when—}

Talon's thrown hair-comb bounced off of Spiral's shoulder, and the sanzai cut off with a mental laugh. {Not. Helping.}

Colonel Jardin's tour of the preserved craft was over much sooner than Stillstorm had anticipated. "There are no further compartments to this vessel?" She asked, even as her mind confirmed that the interior volume she had seen did match the observed exterior. As hard as that had been to observe.

"Prowlers aren't made for comfort, Lashret." the human answered, even as his fellow ODSTs filed past the two of them as they stood on the boarding ramp. "They're made for absolute stealth. I can guarantee that these 'Shells' of yours won't see a thing on our way out of the system."

"We are placing our lives in your hands." Stillstorm added. Of course, their lives had been forfeit the moment that the shuttle was crippled by its collision with Tempest. Even if the ancient craft exploded upon liftoff, nothing further would be lost.

"I am placing the surviving human species aboard this ship." he retorted.

The alien did have a point... if one felt like being charitable.

Stillstorm had been accused of many things over her long career; an excess of charity was not among them. "My personnel will finish boarding within five-hundred solon. Will your pilot be at ready by that time?"

"I didn't pick him because he's my nephew; I picked him because Alexander's the best in the UNSC. That's not as much of a complement as it used to be, but he'll have us in the air not a moment after your girls are aboard."

Stillstorm was about to retort, when the Emperor's Chain sent an admonition at her. Leading the Colonel aside, Tempo said "A loading operation which will complete faster with us not standing in the middle of the boarding area."

Swallowing her irritation, the Torrai walked after them, making a point of turning aside from their continued conversation and surveying the loroi as they moved cargo aboard the 'prowler.' The human craft had some more room aboard the corvette-sized ship than had been found within the dropship, but it would still be a cramped journey. At least the bulky Type-A fuel canisters would only be with them for a short part of the journey.

"Cranky, isn't she?"

Stillstorm bristled at the observation, murmured though it was. Life had given her little reason to be happy, and fewer still to be friendly. Especially not after the collapse of the Semoset Offensive. Not after—

"The Lashret is perhaps the best raider commander in the Union, and she is concerned about the impact that her absence will have on Strike Group 51." Tempo stated quietly what the underhanded mizol must have glimpsed even through Stillstorm's best efforts to suppress her concerns.

Stillstorm jerked her head around, fixing Tempo with a slit-eyed glare. Only the fact that none of the other loroi were near enough to have overheard saved the Parat from more explicit criticism, Emperor's representative or no. It was bad enough that the cursed mizol pried so into her mind; it was certainly not the devious prevaricator's place to reveal Stillstorm's thoughts to an alien of all things!

"Oh, I'm not complaining. I've lived with worse for fifty years." the Colonel said to Tempo, while his eyes regarded Stillstorm calmly. His quiet tone matched the mizol's, low enough that only the three of them would hear. "But if the warriors you left behind in your fleet are as capable as the ones I've seen here, they'll handle things fine."

Stillstorm raised one eyebrow. That was a clumsy compliment if ever she'd heard one: it had been much less than a day since the human had first met any of her subordinates. Nowhere near enough time to form any reliable impressions as to their competence.

The fact that they were among the best in the Union — and she'd have the hair of anyone who said otherwise, prohibition against dueling or no — only slightly lessened her irritation at the blatant pandering.

But the human wasn't done talking. "No, I haven't known them for even a day yet. But I know good troops when I see them." She narrowed her eyes, mentally searching the void where the alien's mind-presence should be. He couldn't have—

Colonel Jardin quirked a thin smile. "No, I can't read minds, either. The UNSC never figured out how to build that into humans, and Tempest wasn't interested in helping. But I've studied your people for forty years of war against them, lived half a century more under the same roof as a hair-trigger loroi who could juggle corvettes, and I've led warriors of your species into battle on more worlds than you can count."

He nodded towards the dropship. "I've been watching your warriors since we left the STO control center. They're good. I've trained better during the Second War — and killed better during the First — but not many. They'll do fine, both these ones here and those left behind in that fleet which had the fortune to bring you here."

Stillstorm glared down at the human for several solons. Counted to eight. Tempo's sub-verbal warning washed over her, ignored. The arrogance of this mind-mute alien to speak to her as if she was a child being encouraged before she left for her diral! The sheer, unalloyed hubris of one who… who—!

Who had fought in a war that saw his species rendered functionally extinct. Who had led a mission deep into Soia territory and kidnapped a Soia leader. Who then pair-bonded with that same leader and fought alongside her fellow loroi in a second war, one that saw the total destruction of an Empire which had lasted two hundred thousand years. And who had only recently been told that his warrior-mate had fallen in battle long ago and without him at her side.

...

She laughed.

Threw her head back and barked her sheer amusement at the knot which she had tied herself into. If it took an ancient alien straight from the most destructive war known — now known — in history to put things in perspective, then surely that was just another spiteful joke of dalid.

The soroin paused in their work, several glancing nervously around the hangar as if expecting some imminent destruction or explosion.

Stillstorm fought her mirth under control and regarded Colonel Jardin in a new light. She raised her voice, just enough to be 'unintentionally' overheard by the loroi frozen in their work. "Your recognition of the competence of my warriors confirms your long experience with loroi." Her gaze flitted to Tempo, who was still glancing back and forth between the Colonel and the Lashret, wariness writ large in her eyes and in her mind-signature. {It seems that you have met your match here, mizol. Keep a close watch on him while I inspect the preparations.} She nodded sharply to Colonel Jardin, and turned to stalk up the ramp into the ship.

Behind her, the sounds and muted sanzai of a smoothly-run work gang resumed. Good.

Those loroi who were not needed for the heavy lifting sat or stood in the corners and sides of the narrow compartments aboard, the awake ones meeting her with the appropriate sub-verbal sanzai acknowledgments as the Lashret walked past. It had been a long day for them all and so most were asleep already, in twos and threes watched over by an alert soroin sentry, blaster slung low at ready.

The standard shifts for catching much-needed rest while in a situation of… uncertain security. The humans seemed to be friendly enough to loroi, yes, but Stillstorm was perfectly aware that she and her warriors were not their loroi. It was wise to keep an appropriate level of caution.

She passed the ODSTs as they crowded around the armory, crisp nods of acknowledgment sent her way before they returned to servicing their weapons. If the listel tozet had still been awake, Stillstorm would have definitely found an excuse to have her observe; those small-arms were definitely something that the Union would need to learn more about.

In the corridor just outside of the cockpit was the 'medical bay' that the senior human had showed her: fold-out beds lining the corridor walls, human medic and loroi doranzer working side-by-side. Mazil-toza Desire neither paused in her work nor looked up as she sent a terse update to Stillstorm. {One knee injury recovered, now able to walk. Four wounded by blaster-shots: two minor and recovered, two serious. Latter two stable and recovering, should be conscious within three thousand solon and returned to light duty within two cycles.}

{And human medical technology?} Stillstorm asked, stepping carefully past the two mutually-alien medical personnel.

{Difficult to determine. This one here has said he is the equivalent of a doranzer field medic, not a senior specialist or surgeon. The tools I have seen thus far are stabilization and field treatments, not ship-grade surgical equipment. Impressive volume-sterilization projector and wound-stabilization foam, however. Will be of great use to the Union.} The doranzer's sub-channels conveyed her disinterest in just how those technologies would be acquired, but also the critical importance that they were acquired all the same.

Stillstorm noted that topic for later, terminating the connection and stepping into the cockpit.

Well, into the doorway. The cockpit itself was larger than that of the Hydra dropship, but was still quite cramped with not only the human pilot but now three loroi present.

The two tenoin straightened up in their seats as the Lashret entered, and also sending their acknowledgment of her presence. The human pilot didn't seem to have noticed the door hissing open.

"—ll reading five-by-five, green across the board." the younger Jardin's fingers danced over the console in front of him. "Reactor's warming up; it'll be ready before we're through the checklists. Spiral, your console should now be—" he turned to the younger tenoin and paused as he caught sight of Stillstorm.

He nodded briefly to her and finished speaking to the tenoin narrat "Should now be in Trade. You'll get to play repeater, forwarding anything important on the sensors to your friends in the back. And senior officers." He turned fully towards Stillstorm now. "'Lashret,' was it?"

His words were polite enough and apparently within the bounds of human military discipline, but Stillstorm noted a complete lack of the deference which her seniority and reputation typically prompted.

Yes, she could definitely see the family resemblance. "Correct. Your vessel can be set to present information in Trade as well as your own language?"

He nodded at the tenoin arrir's seat. "Tempest liked to ride shotgun. Her English wasn't the best at first, so Caliban wrote a translator mesh to sit on top of the interface modules. Haven't had to use it in a while, but it's still there."

"And who is this 'Caliban'?" Stillstorm asked after she had parsed his statement.

"Uh, uncle's assigned AI. Followed him — and Tempest — around everywhere."

He referred to a machine as if it had been a person. But that was a question for later. "At what time will this craft be ready to depart?"

"Five hundred solon, to be conservative." he replied instantly.

She nodded at that and looked to the two tenoin, one after the other. Forced a thin smile onto her face. "It is good to see that you three pilots can work so closely together." Her simultaneous sanzai emphasized the point to the two young warriors. Stillstorm noted the way the Arrir's eyes widened in first confusion and then surprise.

With a brief message, the lashret confirmed that she had sent exactly what she meant, and left the cockpit.

After all, one of her remaining concerns was just what these humans planned to do once they had rendezvoused with Strike Group 51 in the next system over, or the heavier fleet still further away. They had worked with her loroi for now, perhaps more out of habit than anything else. After all, the loroi of the modern world, of the Union, were not the betrayed and hunted Soia constructs that humanity had been forced into an alliance with, nearly three hundred thousand years ago.

Once the humans fully processed that, what would keep them from leaving? From searching the wider galaxy for any sign of their exodus fleet that had apparently disappeared without a trace?

No, it was best that they found some… reason to stay. And the Colonel himself was proof that humans formed long-term romantic attachments, of all the strange things to build a society on. But it clearly was a strong pull to them… and one that evidently could be formed with individual loroi.

Would the humans leave, if their pilot had a personal reason to stay?