After the shaken crewmen of the away-party and its rifle-packing backup-relief force, plus their two new charges had been evacuated from the Penrose-512 with all the clumsy grace of a beached whale pod after a delirious Ariane and a brain-blasted Elster with two busted ribs had been stuffed-up into their own Nation-issued, one-size-fits-no-one EVA-suits and carted back over the way to the mother ship, bound for the cutter's cramped medical bay, the Ozymandias had already fired up its RCS-boosters and flipped over to start a gentle retroburn to bring the cutter to their station before the end of the day – but a priority message had flashed them down before engineering could spool the engines up again and the contents thereof – fresh from Charon Command – had belayed the order that never came.

The nuclear arsenal aboard the Coast Guard's ship were to remain silent, and the silos were not to be popped open. The clapped-out junker wasn't to have a single nut, screw or hex-head bolt touched on its worked, old skin.

Instead, the ship was to reverse course, reconnect with the derelict Penrose it had dumped to clear distance for the demolitions nuke and bring both it, the passengers, and their wounded back to the nearest Coast Guard station tout suite, a la Pluto.

That had been an hour ago and Ozymandias had flashed her relief-cutter, the UNSCCGC Hammurabi, a greeting as the two ships bore down on one and other's starting vectors from separate locations as the machine made the homeward-burn ahead of its crackling engine cones, while a few billion kilometers away, the Pan Am round-system sleeper-flight – the Clipper Orion – touched-in for Port Taenarum that strung the two boomeranging binary planets Pluto and Charon together – and kicked-out the gaggle of star-skipping tourists from the Colonies here to see the Motherworld (or at least Sol, without Earth's throat-cutter prices, which made the place much like the Guam of the 26th century).

One such passenger breezed themself right on through the customs agents with the flash of a nondescript ID that looked similar enough to have passed as the usual, ubiquitous UNSC-ID that all of Mankind's premiere scientific, exploratory and armed forces agency carried, though the details to the beholder gave the owner little fuss without even the thought of a wand-scanning to search for the suicide-bomber jobs whichever latest of the insurgent cells out in the farthest rim tried to attack Sol with in retaliation for their friend Jim down the road's recent run-in with the boys in blue because he called Terry a mong at his Saturday barbeque or whatever the hell silly thing they were upset about now.

51256-61575MS

Lieutenant

1st

SMUTS

Unified Earth Government

ONI/0NOBLE 1

United Nations Space Command

Section 0 Division

Office of Naval Intelligence

Read the field agent's simple grey-blue shoulder brassard pinned-up by their epaulette buttons, pulled-on quietly in one of the public restrooms after they'd caught the 19:17 tram from the Gleam St. station up to Whalebone, where this up-trip was complimented by the brisk walk between that and the fourteen-minute Cable St./ Welcome Soap St.-commute right outside the front door to the Coast Guard's local office strung-along the grand Capital-tether.

Coffee still-warm was sipped-down and the Styrofoam tossed to one of the station's pneumatic bins kept sparkly-clean by the dedicated work of the capital's Intelligence before the Navy's secret-sniffer on the ground wandered their way into the place and was picked-up by a guide who'd been waiting anxiously waiting from one of reception's padded benches to lead the tall, lanky officer in.

Both Ariane and Elster had been tossed-over to the port's own Guard-personnel who'd taken-up the jobby to escort the pair in under the watchful business-ends of their carbines so fresh and new from the Misriah arsenal on Mars that the factory's own grease-job still hadn't been made-mucky by rifle range drill.

And now her came officer Smuts of Naval Intelligence to hound some new victims.

'Are either of our two guests are up and about yet?' Asked the tall, gangling intelligence spook who's lank, Plutonian frame seemed to stretch on upward forever and ever pleasantly as the lift whispered-by its track up to the CG's small hospital contained by its office habitat-compartment it paid good taxpayer's wonga to rent the docking-space.

The Guard escorting the UNSCCG's latest visitor to the impromptu open-door day wasn't sure what was more unpleasant about the interloper: that plastic friendliness he felt was wrong and somehow perverting the words in their mouth or that Section-Zero had barged its way into their affairs – though the Office's internal affairs and security division would sincerely disagree with this line of thought and insisted that as a matter of national-security, it was an S-0 affair, too.

Either way, none of the staff had been smitten by the outwardly friendly and affable beanstalk in the organisation's patented-all-black uniform who's only surrendering to aesthetic ease on the eye was the silver UNSC-badge over the left breast. A tiny reminder to the spooks just who they were supposed to answer to, however much they chafed against it.

'Only one off'm.' The Guard told as the lift car's minimalist panel swept the numbers by to 37. 'The Human haesna yet.'

'Technically they are both Human according to the United Nations Colonial Mortal Dictata.' Corrected the officer, titillatingly.

Then they pinged the old cyberware for the memory data-coming-to-hand and toned pleasantly: 'A human being shall be defined as a person recognized and accepted by a reasonable layperson as being human on the basis of form, behavior, or external appearance, and no authority shall be permitted to use any element of a genetic profile to exclude a person from that definition.'

Besides, the matter of what was and wasn't a Human wasn't lost on someone who's guts had been sloughed-into an android chassis.

Nor was the irony of an ONI day-face agent lecturing an enforcer of the law on the law lost on the Guard who gave his opposite the patented look that all the rest of the United Nations Space Command gave the intelligence-gathering branch when its payroll-staff tried to show them up on the sanctity of the law and Human life.

But 1st Lieutenant Moddie Smuts was miraculously struck blind to the bemusement and instead asked: 'But the individual that you have since identified as Missus Ariane Yeong will soon be conscious?'

'Yes.'

'Good.' They said as the doors swept open with only the faintest wind-whisper of air trying to slip through the near-nonexistent seam gapping the lift from the floor that they loped out into with the long, bandy-legged lope of low-G outer-worlders.

The Guard who'd drawn the short straw to accompany Pluto's native-born son down at reception slipped into their wake and followed through the small hallways the CG hadn't the money to have ordered any larger when they'd commissioned SinoViet for the module a long time back when.

And it irked the Guard that he was following and not leading through his own facility by a spook carrying heat they'd refused to surrender at the door when coming in. Government blank-check and all that to pack in the UNSCCG's stomping grounds.

But he followed at any rate to guide wherever was necessary with helpful remarks and poking – which was to say not at all as they bounded down the hall to room A19, where Elster was unaware of the approaching duo – caught from her recent-reverie and future-thinking by a stir in the talc-soft sheets of white fabric to her right.

'Ari?'

Elster looked up from her steepled fingers and pushed herself out of the forest of cushions the size of Brazil in the hospital bed that had been pulled over by the hospital staff for the tired and cuffed biomech to be dumped into after spending the last 48-hours on the grind as they would say.

She wasn't entirely sure when she'd come back around. Maybe an hour or two, though so far Elster had only just managed to wriggle her way out of the hospital sedatives wearing themselves off on the Replika's systems. Now all alone, stewing, mulling, fretting on hopes and the fears-coming.

They had allowed the tired biomech some alone time with the partner by not bothering to give her a fresh top-up of sleepy-juice, they'd smiled at the end of a job well-done when Elster's own dosage of rads had been shood-off by their tools and pharmaceuticals, unaware (together with Elster herself) that the aforementioned was looking at a potentially life-sentence or even death-penalty depending on whether Pluto-Charon or Sedna Law would get the job, after they'd agreed in the courts which of the two bodies the assault had been perpetrated closest to.

It would've been a sweet gesture if the last three years hadn't been spent in near-absolute loneliness already.

But today, whatever god or general eldritch abomination had been looking out for them willing, the long days of solitude would be coming to an end soon.

It'd been a few hours since the end of the operation the Coast Guard had made to shoot-up her veins with whatever pharmaceuticals they had on tap and despite the immense weight of exhaustion crushing her shoulders down, she managed to keep her head up and her mind working so that she could be there for Ariane when the moment to speak finally came (even if she was strapped into her bed).

And in all the time that had been spent listening to the distant whir of hidden machinery; the watching of spacecraft flying to-and-from past the hospital window going up and down out of the atmosphere and the tuning-in to Taenarum's few German radio stations – just some good 'ole white-noise for the background brain-burner while she'd absentmindedly started planning what she wanted to say when Ariane woke, but as soon as the second word had been arrived at, she'd already forgotten the first.

Nothing really went together. Not as she wanted it all to at any rate – never quite making the verbal two-and-two making ends meet – because even the stoh-wick Elster, as indefatigable and laconic as they came, was already shrivelling at the tirade-coming that all feared, the wife's row.

Because while it was true, they'd both agreed for the quick cryo-dip to preserve the Gestalt's clapping-out body before too many teeth could fall out of rotting gums, it'd been a pinkie-promise of a couple weeks and no more – even if Elster had decided to interpret the length of a day more liberally than perhaps Ariane thought and maybe padded it out in some areas and stretched it in a few others.

She glanced sideways at the bed opposite her, nearest the wall with its curtained gallery-window to the hallway outside and wondered what to say for posterity's sake and managed to wiggle a hand from the tight-as-iron hospital sheets and she took hold of Ariane's frail hands and gave a gentle squeeze, brushing the ring she'd made for her Gestalt companion with the back of her scuffed thumb, turned on the unused exercise bike stuffed-away in storage with an M10 nut and a pair of files.

Gestalt comas – she had read once – were odd in the sense that many accounts of people coming out of them had said that they could recall entire conversations spoken to them by loved ones.

The usually-laconic Elster leant a little closer, willing to put this to the test and smiled a threeway smirk of usual confidence, exhaustion and the just-hidden teaspoon of hysteria that had come with an end to the hell of it all.

'I did it, Ari. I told you I would get us somewhere safe, didn't I? I found us that place and they've helped mend us both now. I asked you to hang on and you did.'

The Replika's eyes creased into crows-feet as the smile bowled into something more than exhausted and drained as she pecked the Gestalt on the head.

'Ariane. Wake up.'

Elster leant back and smiled when a little voice she hadn't heard in years piped up: 'You know?' It asked. 'I can… really get used… to waking up like that.'

Elster grinned, a gesture that had gone unused for so long it made her face ache when muscles so unused were having their money's worth milked out of them to remember the numbers. 'Don't make a habit of it – I don't think I can go a moment longer away from you.'

The albino grinned weakly, pupils still pinpointing, but growing back to normal again as they adjusted to the station's lights, which were stronger than what they had rolled with on the Penrose. 'I'll try not to – but I think we should avoid signing-up for any further deep-space exploration missions.'

Bleary red eyes shuffled here-and-there across the sterile, white room under a frown of knitting brows as the smile slacked-off into something that kept her face pinched into it only out of confusion. The happiness drained into the mindboggler.

'Elster, where… where-uhmmm… are we… like actually?'

And then Elster's very carefully-planned speech went to hell in a handbag when all the neatly-organised thoughts that'd spent the last while all queuing up into little rows and orders of precedence decided that now was the time to cash-in on their waiting tickets out of the brain-joint.

'We're on a station called… Port… we're on a station, Ariane – between two binary planets called Pluto and Charon – like Leng! Tethered between both. We were picked up by the Coast Guard who found us out in the Oort Cloud, belonging to something called the Unified Earth Government and they took us here after boarding our ship. They treated us for radiation sickness on their ship, but they said that you needed to be taken to a hospital for further treatment and now we've been here for several hours.' Elster rambled, leaving out rather tactfully and quite wisely that attempted-manslaughter charges were still in her deck of cards.

Ariane pushed herself upright, but the bed automatically adjusted for the desire to prevent unnecessary patient movement, and she broke into the grin again – a little stronger this time. 'Elster… wow… and I really mean this – but… I don't think I've ever heard you talk this much in one go; you know?'

Her weak laughter made hoarse by a throat so long on the icecubes was cut short by artificial lips smacking hers, but she rolled with the punches anyway and wrapped tired atrophy-muscled arms over Elster's bare back. The short and sweet "welcome back".

She wiped her mouth with the cuff of a hospital gown sleeve. 'Someone's happy to see me.'

'It's been a minute.' The LSTR-unit said as she collapsed back into the bed and went limp with yearsworth of back-breaking labour to keep the sack-of-scat machine from exploding on them or whatever other miseries it could have conjured-up for them.

Then Ariane asked the one question she'd been dreading but knew was coming.

'H… ho… how… oh… excuse me… long was I out for, Elster?' Her ears tuned-in on between the diesel-engine bellow of the stuttering throat-clearing made easier by the pitcher of water by the table. A few moments extra to stew-over nice and well in squirming discomfort as she fed water down the pipes.

'A while.' She sighed evasively and folded her arms almost protectively over herself to ward off the coming wrath.

The Gestalt officer saw the gesture that made her look so comically squat and looked her up and down, taking in the worn-out polyethylene casing smeared with grime and dirt that had worked into seams and manufactured edges of her body's outer panels – more mess than should have been built over just a few days or even weeks. 'How long?'

'A while, I don't know, Ari – I wasn't keeping track.'

The Gestalt rolled her head over on its bearings and would have met Elster's blue eyes, had the Replika not been avoiding her by looking out the window and watching a tug lashed to a construction barge coasting by on its way to service a new orbit-build apartment complex being installed a few kilometres down the station.

Scout Officer Ariane Yoeng crossed her arms over the fabric gown, breaking the silence with the crunkle which seemed awfully loud to the professional window-watcher. 'Elster, as the commanding officer of the Penrose… F… Five-One-Two, I… am ordering you to tell me how… long I was in the cryogenics… pod.'

Elster ground her tongue into the back of the teeth during the stutter-start command that upped and downed with each creeping cough and rack of air.

It wasn't that LSTR had given much weight to Ariane's rank over her since the first year or two or five of their exile in the interstellar here-and-there between Eusan and the Oort – certainly not for a long, long time – starting a romantic relationship had pretty much bulldozed that social barrier for all but the direst circumstance… but that didn't mean she could easily disobey the woman she doted so much over – not without an immense effort that just wouldn't come to weary surgical-titanium bones anymore.

Mip and Rual had been the lucky winners of that lottery.

Elster turned as slowly as she could to put off the coming answer for as long as she could. 'Three years.'

'Three years! Thr… three? Three! Three years?' Ariane barked, angrier than she'd been in a very, very long time – not since she'd boogied from Rotfront. 'You kept me out for three years?'

Elster, despite the increased reflexes and strength of a mechanic Replika, superhuman by comparison to the petite pure-organic shouting at her, shrunk deeper and deeper into the pillows, wishing there was another cryogenic pod to hand to crawl into herself.

'Elster, what the hell!' Ariane shouted loud and hard enough it made Elster throw her head over to see if anyone outside was hearing the outburst. The pistol-armed Guard by the door was leaning ever so slightly, enough that she could peer in at the arm-flapping shouting.

Elster tried to smile a grimace at him of awkward partners being reamed-out everywhere and found the muscles to do so had atrophied in the years of solitude. The guard leant back, and the shouting went on for a while longer yet not quite satisfied with the results provided so far.

'Ari-'

'Don't you Ari me!' She bellowed like a bull kicked in the goolies. 'You said it would only be for a few weeks at a time!'

'Ariane!' Elster yelled back and pushed herself back up, hands out and fingers splayed in supplication. 'You were sick! You were dying! It would have killed you to stay out!'

Outside the guard's cyberware had tapped into the room's audio receptors and eavesdropped in on the domestic dispute, ready to hit both out by replacing the room's oxygen with knock-out gas, should things get violent.

But he didn't as Ariane was already starting to run out of steam and sank back into the hospital bed, drained by the tongue-lashing Elster had been bent over for and not in the good way. She was still glaring at her pseudo-wife, though and the Replika thought about saying something, but decided better of it.

'You and I are going to talk about your promise-keeping.' Ariane warned with a finger.

Elster thought that was a bit unfair, she'd always kept every single promise since her initial boot-up and she also lacked actually promising Ariane any particular deadline for the wake-up thaw, anyway.

'And what's with your chest, anyway and why are your hands and ankle-cuffed to the bed?' She scowled, but Elster was saved from further oral annihilation from the little terrier by a quiet knock at the door, which slid open a moment later with a faint woosh of displacing air and winding motors.

If either Gestalt or Replika had been born as the daughters of Sol, they would been too surprised by their uninvited guest who stepped in with the tall and elongated, frame that hovered over both of them, dressed head-to-toe in the simple and nondescript black uniform and pyramid of the Office of Naval Intelligence, so unlike the rest of the body, crisscrossed as it was by lines of plug-and-play prosthesis from the head to the toes.

Red and blue eyes met helder white orbs marked by all-black, slit by catlike pupils that seemed to slow a little, like the seams that ran from eyelids to the cheekbones.

Both interstellar visitors looked up to their new interloper with interest and in Elster's case a great degree of relief a new bone had been thrown at her Gestalt's internal attack dog to gnash at instead for a while.

'Officer Ariane Yoeng and LSTR-Five-One-Two?' Their interrogator asked amiably hands steepled over their crisp uniform sans creases and both nodded at this bizarre figure so unlike anything back home – too flamboyant and flashy to be a Replika and too prosthetic to be a Gestalt.

'My name is Lieutenant Smuts from naval intelligence and I am here to interview the pair of you.' Said the self-proclaimed Smuts who spoke slowly, pleasantly and almost as though to a pair of special-needs children meeting their new teacher.

There was a moment of awkward silence that hung in the air and the guard wondered if it had actually managed to smother Ariane's anger or just momentarily brushed it. But under the exterior of Smuts, something counted to three before clapped his hands with a gentle swat and a firm rub of palms.

'Well, why don't we start with our names and where we're all from first?' Said the lithe Outerworlder as they pulled a chair over in their long-paced wake that crossed the room in just one step for every one that theirs would have made. 'My name is Johann Smuts – I was born in Tartarus – that's the city right down there on Pluto and I'm seventy-nine years old as per the Earth calendar and as I said, I work for the Office of Naval Intelligence.'

There was a pause as Smuts sat themselves down, hands steepled over their waist and tall enough to be able to look down at both of the UNSCGC's most recent catches. It seemed to go on for a bit before Elster looked to Ariane, before volunteering as the first victim.

'LSTR-Five-One-Two – ship-mechanic. I was made on Heimat, and I don't know how old I am exactly.'

Smuts' smile never faltered as the Gestalt officer came under the withering friendliness.

'Navigation Officer Ariane Yeong, born on Rotfront – but thanks to someone, I don't know how old I am at the moment.'

'And may I ask where the pair of you come from? I have been led to believe by the Coast Guard debriefing reports that you aren't from either Sol or Proxima Centauri which they found your vessel cruising away from.'

Elster remained a silent and good girl, hands balled into tight fists on her knees – worried that another tongue-lashing was in the making again if she trod on what was Ariane's stomping ground on their side of the Penrose-programme.

'No… our exploration vessel started its journey from the Eusan-system… I've never heard of Proxima Centauri – but… I have… sorry…' She chugged some more then went on: 'I have heard of the word Sol be… before. It means sun in one of… Vineta's old languages, doesn't it?'

'Why yes, it does. Does the word Earth mean anything to you? Maybe Terra?'

Ariane chewed her chapped lip before shaking her head in the negative for the first, but clarifying: 'The word Terra does sound familiar… I think it's another Vinetan word for Vineta itself…'

The albino eyed the Replika suspiciously, as though her thick dialect from that world made her the resident field-expert on the subject, but the Magpie shrugged unknowingly for ignorance's sake and Ariane just passed it by.

And Smuts let themself into the silence that followed by relating: 'This is odd because we often use the word Terra for Earth on a lot of our star-maps. Sol is the sun out there,' he flexed a long piano-finger out the window where the star freckled by its orbiting Dyson-spheres tingled just over Charon – visible only by the light-bowing over its curvature.

'And Terra you can't see right now, but it's the third planet from Sol.'

'Vineta's the third planet from Eus...' Elster intoned quietly in a gently mumble to no one in particular, feeling as though she had to contribute her two Rationmarks to the conversation at hand.

She tried not to look at the narrow red-dot slits glowering her way for this most rude of all interjections with trivia.

But Smuts seemed more pleased than punch at the LSTR's astrological musings and asked about the order of the planets from their sun which he was told was little sun-scorched Ys, poison-cloud Buyan with its floating metropolises, watery Vineta, desert Kitezh and so on and so forth.

Elster watched as the intelligence agency spook's face lit up with genuine delight as they noted tit-for-tat the similarities between their two home-systems. Just shave-off the names and speed-up the terraforming-process a tad for most of the Galilean and Jovian moons and you had yourself a one-to-one copy.

And Smuts told them of Earth, the world-city not slagged and wasted by war unwept. Of Sol and All Her Colonies, both inner and outer – Man's contact with other species, its histories and past-wars and present turbulence. Faster-than-light travel and Artificial Intelligences. All a part of the little quid pro quo they had going.

Their histories and cultures and lives and worlds and biology matched one another's so well it was almost as if they were the same thing.

'And isn't that just funny?' Noted Smuts who didn't think it was funny in the least, nor the labcoats and desk-drivers writing-up the theorems in the UNSC's more civil researching bureaus and agencies while listening to the audio-recording his prosthesis was uploading live to their addresses.

'Having such similar home-systems? But this Vineta… it's the homeworld of Mankind?'

'How did you know?' Interrogated Ariane who'd since stopped chunter-coughing like a broken-down generator each time she tried to speak.

Smuts' fixed smile didn't lessen in the slightest as they unfolded their legs from one another and finger-steepled. 'Because while the two of you were recuperating, we had one of our Intelligences sorting through your ship's files, communications and maps.'

They held their hands up to forestall any righteous indignations. 'Just as a security-check, you understand. We fought a war a long time ago against a vicious bunch led by some idiot warlord and every now and then we found some of his sleeper agents – literal sleeper agents in cryonics in deep space… unfortunately these encounters always turned violent before the boarding officers could secure their passengers, so we wanted to make very sure that neither of the you were planning anything brash.'

They looked at Elster. 'Brasher… at least…'

The Gestalt officer followed the stare and felt her eyes hood-over again into that scowl of indignation. 'Why, what has she done? What have you done, Elster?'

'Your partner assaulted a Coast Guard with the intention of killing them when they found you in stasis officer Yeong. One is currently undergoing surgery for prosthesis.'

'My… Els… what!' Ariane bellowed as loud as a donkey being gelded. 'What did you do?'

The Magpie held her hands up in placation, a barrier-ward against apoplectic albinos, though she didn't come out with any defences or anything – not that there was much of an opportunity for any of that with the nonstop angered, incensed word-salad that just came tumbling-out in a big crush.

Eventually the second wife-on-wife public anal-fisting by enraged space-lesbians everywhere after learning their significant-other has undertaken a highly foolish and inadvisable such as attempting to rob a bank, commit tax-fraud or assaulted a member of the armed forces by beheading with a fireaxe in the lawful execution of their duties.

'Yes…' Smuts said as a lifeline to the Replika who looked accordioned there between the pair of them. A squat mound of plate-backed muscles bunched into a small ball.

'Currently your partner is looked at potentially life imprisonment at best, officer Yeong… and that assumes Pluto and Charon will get the case… civil law and all that… but… Earth is willing to use her considerable influence to have the case passed-over onto a court of Pluto and Charon as Sedna had the last person who assaulted an officer of the armed forces put to death…'

Elster's titanium knuckle-joints groaned as her fists shook in bottled-up fury ready to burst again.

'But?' Demanded the smaller of the two lesbians who'd read enough trashy thriller-noires to see where this was going.

The officer's armed. Elster thought in a brain-whir of planning that was wholly deaf to the outside world. Large, heavy. Won't kick too hard even if it looks 12mm. Punch to the throat, knee to the groin and grab it. Shoot the officer then the guard by the doo-

Elster blinked back the sudden jumble of violence-coming her brain flicked the switch on and laid her hands out flat on her knees to show more herself than anyone else in the room that she was just a harmless, silly little Magpie not plotting mass-murder in the next few moments.

'We can do this for you – have you claim that Elster was acting in self-defence… the court might take a year or two for any decision to come down – but Pluto's law is vague enough that it will allow us a lot of wiggle-room in the sentence and maybe let her off with five-years of house-arrest.'

Smuts finally dropped the smile, though a ghost of it still smirked at them both, only more tiredly than before between the upheld, palm-out hands. 'Officer Yeong – I will drop the façade of friendly neighbourhood intelligence agent and say this to you very plainly. I am under the impression from what we have gathered from your ship that neither of you are overly smitten with the Nation you have told me about – and after having read your instructions forwarded to you, I am not overly surprised by this fact, nor if you have suffered what I personally think is abominable intolerance from the state-approved library your ship was stocked with.'

They clapped their hands. 'But my government is willing to give you sanctuary from the Nation in protective asylum if you can tell us absolutely everything that you know about the Nation and just how you got here. More on this topic I cannot say. Not here. This room isn't safe from either the local Coast Guard Intelligence or prying ears – and we will give this anyway – but we will want to know about the place you have come from if what you told me about this Bioresonance is true.'

A pair of envelopes were produced from the inside breast pocket of their black tunic whose zipless seam spilled open from the collar, the sewed itself back up after the two documents were procured for their perusal. Two bone-white cases of pristine paper, signed by the head-of-state, addressed to each of them both.

'These are your papers approving your asylum, signed only an hour ago as you will see by Presidential-decree, rather than going through the usual process that could take months and leave the pair of you vulnerable to potential repatriation, should we come into contact with the Nation at some point and we believe that this might be inevitable if the pair of you were capable of arriving so close to Earth at a time when most of our fleets are meting-out pacification campaigns in the neighbouring arms of the galaxy. Your library's propaganda – and I will call it as such for it is – makes continued mentions to an Empire that the Nation is at war with, and we genuinely do not want your war spilling-over into Sol. Not with an interstellar empire that relies on Earth and not with so much at stake. Our Intelligences who are privy to the ongoing investigation all calculate with near-total-certainty that we would win in any armed-conflict with the Nation, regardless of Bioresonance, but the stakes are too high, and the fallout may well be potentially catastrophic.'

Ariane's mouth worked itself open and closed. 'I… I'mmmm not… dead… am I?...'

The idea of finally – finally – finding freedom from the Nation was a pure opioid-rush of unimaginable sozzle – stoned-out of her tits and fanny to the wind-kind of high.

'No Officer Yeong, you are not dead – however we believe that soon the Nation or Empire will replicate your feat. We do not know entirely how you have managed to arrive here – either by freak-anomalies in space-time or however it happened – but we desperately need to know about your time and your world so that the Security Council may know what they are dealing with and how we as a species will go forward with this information.'

'Yes.' She said quietly.

Ariane wept tears of joy coming from long away and threw her arms over Elster now that at long, long last – they were free from Eusan, and they were free from its stupid war tearing apart the mother system against the dead Empire worshipping the memory of a corpse. Both agreed, though the Gestalt more blubberingly and the Replika with a shoot-up of relief for such lenient terms given the incident.

Three days later, when they were ready and dressed fresh, the two were taken by a small personal shuttlecraft straight to Callisto, where a small ONI safehouse was kept ready for them by the small staff out in the green fields of the moon with a not-too-shabby view of the Lake District.

And 1st Lieutenant Smuts hastened themself to catch the 152:30:00 (local time) Pan Am Clipper Andromeda bound for Sydney, Earth.