[Crossover Fanfiction, Complete] The Past Awakens

[Urist]

With regards to "Soia-UNSC relations" there's this quote:

“Then came Humanity. The Soia… came into conflict with us, and she was sent to oversee our annexation.”

...

“Over the five decades of the First War, [Tempest's] actions brought her great fame throughout the Soia Empire.” Colonel Jardin’s voice was hard. “She smashed through the Outer Colonies, taking hundreds of systems and… convincing them to cease resistance. Those that did not, were put to the torch.”

I wanted to set up that the Soia-UNSC war wasn't the same as the Covenant-UNSC war. The Soia weren't out to *exterminate* humanity, but to *conquer* them. They were far from pleasant about it, but there's probably no real polite way to conquer a civilization of tens of trillions of aliens. It's why the UNSC worked more closely with the Loroi Rebels in this story than they did in Halo canon with the Sangheili Rebel factions: humans didn't *like* the loroi, but it was more at the "You're a foreign power who invaded and conquered our people" level rather than "You explicitly promised to make us extinct, and went a long ways towards completing that promise" animosity that they struggled with in Halo canon.

Of course, it also emphasizes the whole "The UEG/UNSC are not good people" aspect of Halo that tended to get pushed into the background by the presence of even *more* evil organizations like the Covenant, the Flood, the Didact, etc. After all, in Halo canon the limited revenge strikes that the UNSC made against the Covenant all targeted, well, *alien* personnel and civilians. In this story... well, let's just say that all the surrendered human colonies that were under Soia occupation *also* ended up being bombed into oblivion by the end of the Second War. ONI tends to take a dim view of 'collaborators.'

Note: Actual, fairly-serious spoiler to follow:

SpoilerShow

And while Alex here is probably the closest example to "Human raised by Loroi," a later character *does* appear in this story who is a Loroi that was captured as a child and raised by the UNSC.

[Urist]

Talon was mentally on autopilot as she watched the prowler lifting off of the hangar floor, nosing out of the narrow entrance with barely a hand’s-width to spare on each side as Ensign Jardin’s nimble and agile fingers danced across the — don’t think of that right now!

Had the Lashret really sent what Talon thought she had? It hadn’t been an 'order,' no, but the arrir felt that maybe it would have been better had it been so phrased. That would have been clearer, at least — she was no mizol, to read extensive instructions out of a sanzai message shorn of most of its side-channels!

<No need to worry! Now you can tell that listel tozet that you are simply 'following instructions'! Or maybe she will want to work ‘with’ us!> Spiral teased playfully. At least someone seemed happy to have received Stillstorm’s… ‘permission.’ <You know, at the right monasteries, they let you ‘double-book’ an encount—>

Talon shut down that line of thinking instantly. <We will approach him as one would a fellow warrior and friend, not as one would an encounter.> That was the wiser option, no matter what Stillstorm had implied. For one thing, between his height, his skill at piloting, and his lack of sanzai, Alexander would have made a very strange male. Better not to try to fit him into that category.

<Why not both? There was this one time I went to Tempest’s flight-deck baths during off-time, and...> Spiral sent back, along with an image that was not helping Talon’s thoughts right now.

<That particular teidar has a 'reputation.'> Talon pointed out. <And not one that I want for myself.>

Acceleration pressed the two of them back into their seats, as Did Ever Plummet Sound raised his nose and leapt into the sky. Jardin was hopefully too focused on piloting to notice that his two copilots were distracted with their own conversation.

Spiral conceded the point. <But it is still only warriors being close friends, nothing more. And even if some seek to make it ‘similar’ to an encounter, for others it can also be simply the pure camaraderie of fellow warriors.> She added a few memories of her, Talon, and several of their diral-sisters trading off back-scrubbing and hair-cleaning in the same compartment after returning from a mission.

Talon’s heart clenched at the scene, at faces and mind-signatures of loroi forever lost.

Waterfall and Carbon comparing their kills from the last sortie while they cleaned the interiors of their suits. Talon herself rinsing shampoo from the shoulder-length black hair of another loroi, the flowing mane that Brook had claimed was her right first as leader of first their diral and then their squadron. Sharpleaf leaning her head on Emerald’s bare shoulder as both dozed off while their suits dried on the rack behind them.

She felt the affection that Spiral still held for them all. The memories of how the stresses left by combat had melted away under the massaging of soft water and strong fingers.

Spiral let the memories fade from the sanzai link, but her emotions were still raw as she sent <Now imagine if we in the squadron had never been that close. If we had not been diral-sisters, knowing each other, trusting each other in mind and body both.>

The junior tenoin indicated the human who sat in the cockpit with them, a faint smile on his face as he piloted the prowler out of the Ring’s artificial atmosphere. <Aliens cannot form these bonds. They are mind-blind. They cannot feel each other, not really, not where it counts. Physical touch and intimacy are the closest imitation they can get, whether they are Neridi, Barsam, Arekka, Delrias… or Human.>

Spiral re-sent the sense of comfort, of belonging, that she had felt when being so close to her diral-sisters. And compared it favorably to a — thankfully brief — memory of her own encounter with a male, Spiral still flushed from her diral graduation. <It is always… closer with fellow warriors, I am told. And it seems to me that it would be so. Would you deny that comfort to a warrior of a species that looks so like us, just because he is a male and it seems strange?>

Talon thought about it as the prowler banked into a sweeping turn, better able to maneuver stealthily now that it was free of the atmosphere. It would feel wrong to… 'manipulate' a normal male in such a way. Especially since she knew that the Lashret hadn’t suggested it out of the softness of her flinty heart or any concern over the human’s mental well-being.

But to provide a shoulder to lean on for a fellow warrior? One who had lost so much more than had even Talon and Spiral’s ever-shrinking diral? Even more than had that red-haired berserker in the hold down below?

Talon could do that, and she let that certainty leak into her sanzai.

In a flash, deadly-serious Spiral was gone, replaced with the always-teasing sister that Talon had long known. <Especially when he is cute, if you ignore his weird height and broad shoulders. I wonder if—>

Talon cut her off. <A warrior is never ‘cute.’>

<Message received, Arrir!> Spiral acknowledged her as if to a formal superior. But she couldn’t keep up the façade of seriousness for long. <Then what is he? As a warrior, of course.>

Talon glanced over at the alien pilot. The alien warrior. She searched her mind for a term that fit. It was… difficult for someone that she had known for less than a day, and she was not sure how much was her own mind projecting what it wanted to see in the admittedly-intriguing alien that she was ordered to ‘approach.’ Friendly? Brave? Determined?

“Just right.”

<Yes, exactly.> leaked her subconscious mind, before she realized that it was Jardin who had spoken.

Spiral let out a strangled squeak as she fought to keep her peals of laughter contained to sanzai only, and Jardin continued. “Right above the target site.” He glanced over at Spiral before turning to Talon with a quizzical expression on his face. “I understand that it’s an, uh, emotional moment. Would your Lashret wish to say a few words?”

<See?> sent Spiral. <He’s as perceptive and thoughtful as any—>

“That is good of you to say.” Talon spoke aloud, even as her eyes flashed a warning at her diral-sister that she didn’t risk putting into sanzai. “I will ask her now.”

<Lashret, we are holding station at the drop coordinates above Tempest’s wreck. Pilot Jardin asks if you wish to speak the ship’s honor before we resign the vessel.>

Stillstorm’s curiosity echoed through the link. <The humans have a similar practice? Or did our ancestors of his era all practice as we do on Taben?>

<I do not know, Lashret. He did not say.>

<Inform him that I will be there in seventy solon.> The Torrai cut the link.

“Lashret Stillstorm agrees with your suggestion.” Talon said, before adding “We are appreciative of your mindfulness.” She considered asking the mizol for aid in cramming her thoughts into the limited form of vocal words, but decided against it. This was to be personal.

“Sure, I—” Jardin paused, grimacing. “I know what it’s like to lose one’s ship. And—” his eyes searched Talon’s for a moment, before he turned back to his display. “And if I’m not mistaken, your ‘Tempest’ was shot down fast enough that you probably didn’t have time to pull all the bodies from the ship. Still unburied dead left aboard.”

'Unburied'?

“Humans bury their dead?” That didn’t seem quite… sanitary.

“That’s most traditional, but cremation is done when, uh, the circumstances require it. I understand that—” he cut himself off again, clearly thinking even while he spoke in that peculiar alien way. “Actually, how do loroi handle their war dead nowadays?”

“Cremation is the honorable way.” She answered. “Was it not always so?”

“The Soia kept the remains of those who ‘lived greatly and nobly for the Empire’ in large mausoleums. Mostly ended up full of architects, scientists and politicians, the ‘Greats’ that the Soia wanted everybody to remember. Dead warriors planetside were usually buried in communal graves, once stripped of their armor and anything else recyclable. Aboard the moon-ships, the bodies themselves were sent to the recycler too.”

Talon and Spiral shared a moment of revulsion at the callousness. “And those who sided with humanity?”

“They, uh, didn’t want to do things the Soia way. Usually went with cremation, but some requested to be interred in Loroi mausoleums, to make a point. Ended up with a good few of those on and above Earth, actually; the UEG and the Legions making a joint statement.” He snorted. “More to each other than to anybody else.”

Before she could say anything to that, the door hissed open and Stillstorm entered once more, followed by Colonel Jardin. “Still and steady, Ensign?” he asked his nephew.

“Holding nose-up above the drop point, sir, ready to go.” the younger Jardin replied. “Rear hatch is ready to open on command.”

The Colonel nodded and pressed himself up against the side of the compartment, opposite Spiral. He gestured with one hand. “Your show, Lashret.”

Apparently understanding the meaning of his invitation, Stillstorm took a half-step forward into the center of the small open area right behind the two forward crew seats. Talon felt her brief indecision over whether to keep the ceremony to sanzai or break with tradition and speak aloud.

Tradition won.

The recently-awoken listel tozet briefly sent from just outside the cockpit, indicating that she was ready to memorize the proceedings.

Stillstorm began, <The vessel Tempest served for sixteen years, twenty-four nanapi, and nine days. In that time, he earned eighteen Combat Banners and his crew were awarded the Union Starburst twice and the Emperor’s Citation once. When the war was at its most dire point, he was always to be found where the fighting was fiercest. As his brothers foundered, he battled on through the worst conditions the war would see, in the hope that the winds of victory would one day sweep warmly across his decks. The names of more than a hundred battles are in his Record of Service and he has survived many attacks… until now. He has given his all for the Union and for his crew, and his honor as a warrior stands unmarred.>

Even tradition had to yield slightly, as Stillstorm then spoke aloud, “Open this vessel’s hatch.”

Ensign Jardin tapped a single command, nodding silently back at her.

With the number of loroi eyes and minds each broadcasting their view of events in the compartments below, it was easy for Talon to follow along even from the bridge. The somberness of the loroi packed into the prowler coalesced into a blanket, centered around the two Taben-born soroin that stood flanking the Type-A containers as the slowly-opening ramp let distant sunlight play across the scene.

Once the ramp was open, the two soroin performed a last-minute check on the simple guidance package that had been attached to the crate, and then gently pushed it out to float away towards the Ring interior below.

Stillstorm finished, <To preserve his memory and his dignity, we now put him to the torch.>

Few loroi eyes were dry aboard the Did Ever Plummet Sound as the package fell towards their former vessel. Even those not from Taben were pulled along by the emotions of those who did recognize the combination of Belerid warrior’s-pyre and Amenalid ship-retirement ceremony.

For the first time in her life, it struck Talon as strange how loroi — well, mostly Tabenid loroi — felt nothing odd at speaking of a male warrior’s honor… when the ‘male’ in question was a warship.

At a sharp nod from Stillstorm, the ramp closed once more. Even at a distance of fifty thousand mannal, the burst of radiation that would be released by the detonation would be nothing to sneer at.

Ensign Jardin glanced between the three loroi in the room, and then quickly tapped a brief series of inputs. The prowler rotated slowly on its vertical axis, the cockpit windows swinging around just in time for their eyes to track the Type-A canister as it fell out of visual range.

A video-feed projection flared to life above the pilot’s console, alongside a rapidly-changing number of human characters. Another tap from Ensign Jardin, and it re-formatted to show a countdown in solon and using Trade numerals. Talon carefully eyed the feed and numbers, ensuring that she did her part in sending every detail on to the crew down in the hold, especially to the tozet in the corridor.

Eight, seven, six, five…

The two Jardins each disabled their lotai and snapped their right hand up to their forehead, palm flat, gaze fixed on the video feed. Sixty-two minds pulsed with mixed sadness and resolve as the eye-searing distant blast blanked out the display.

Talon was far from the only loroi aboard who felt that brief burst of kinship with their newfound alien once- —and perhaps future — -allies.

When the fireball faded, the two humans dropped their hands and raised their lotai.

Stillstorm said simply, “Thank you.” in an uncommon bout of politeness. She looked to the Colonel. “You say that your craft can engage this ‘slipspace’ drive at any point within a system?”

Instead, it was Ensign Jardin who answered. “Ordinarily, yes. But once we drew clear of the Ring, our slipspace sensors went… strange.”

The Lashret turned to him. “There have been several days of ‘strange’ in this system. Explain.”

“Slipspace is… 'complex.'” The pilot said. “Ordinarily, it would be simple enough to slice open a portal here and leave. But the, uh, ‘barrier’ as one could call it between realspace and slipspace is much more… ‘solid’ for lack of a better word, than I’ve ever seen before. Than the nav computer even knows what to do with.”

Stillstorm turned to Talon. <Pilot, see if any of this is recognizable to you.>

<Affirmative, Lashret.> Talon stood from her seat and squeezed past the torrai to lean over Alexander Jardin. “Can you maybe show the readings that are so strange to you? I am a little trained in ship-size navigation and also in travel beyond light.”

“Sure. Here.” He brought up the display again. “Display mode toggle is here, and this one’s the scale.”

“Very much thanks.” Talon said distractedly, flipping between the data sorting modes and looking for anything familiar. Even with the screen set to Trade, the method of organizing the information was, well, alien. Until—

“This appears familiar.” She finally came across a field-strength sort overlaid onto the system as a whole. She played with the amplification settings several steps in either direction, before returning it to the default. “It looks normal and complete to me. There is the jump zone on which we entered the system, there and there are the other two known jump zones. It all is looking normal for the purpose of navigation. For beyond that, I am not the best to be asked.”

She sent <Lashret, I recommend that we—> Oh. She glanced over her shoulder to confirm that Stillstorm had left the room while she was distracted, and that Beryl was just now leaning over Ensign Jardin’s other side. <Listel Tozet, is there anything that you can see which looks unusual about these readings?>

Several solon later, the white-haired loroi shook her head. <This all appears normal. It is as I remember it upon entry to the system.> She turned to look down at Jardin. “I cannot see anything that is unusual. Is this not what you are used to seeing with your sensors?”

The two humans looked at each other for some time. “Not at all.” Ensign Jardin pointed to the screen, circling one finger around. “This? We’ve never seen that before.”

Beryl looked over his head at Talon, both loroi exchanging a puzzled look. The tozet spoke first. “It is the system gravity well. The line describes the volume within which it is too dangerous to attempt a jump into hyperspace.”

Talon added “This is not common in your experience?”

“The gravity well is a gravity well, yes.” The younger Jardin repeated. “The weird part is that the slipspace boundary is suddenly tied to it.”

“Is that not normal?”

“No. I’m a pilot, not a physicist, but I know that slipspace, uh, doesn’t work like that.”

His uncle mused, “Or it didn’t work like that.”

Ensign Jardin craned his neck, looking back in surprise. “You think slipspace could’ve... ‘changed’?”

“We are floating here, right next to a Ring that was built to weaponize slipspace. We fired it, and now slipspace is acting ‘different.’” He nodded to Talon and Beryl. “We already know that the Ring did not perform exactly as Tempest thought it would. If you want my guess?” He blew out a breath. “The Soia misplaced a zero or two in their math, and now they broke slipspace.”

The two loroi in the room struggled to imagine the known laws governing FTL travel as being ‘broken.’ “If your slipspace is tied now to the gravity well, maybe it is a good thing to try if we move to a jump zone? It could be a solution to this problem that you have seen.” said Talon.

“Do it.” Said the Colonel.

<Lashret?> Talon asked, forwarding the essence of the conversation.

<That is… interesting. Does it appear that the humans are telling the truth?”>

<About things being different than they remember? I am no mizol to know for certain, but their surprise and confusion seemed genuine.>

<Very interesting.> Stillstorm repeated. <It seems that we have little choice but to hope that your suggestion will work. Do what you can to see that it does.> She ended the connection.

Well, that left Talon in an interesting position. “Lashret Stillstorm agrees that this idea is most worth attempting.” Now, finding how a pair of tenoin — who had trained in the basics of faster-than-light navigation but had experience only as a fighter pilot — and a listel tozet sensor officer were going to help much when the two people who had even heard of ‘slipspace’ were confused would be a challenge.

“Good.” said Ensign Jardin, who had already begun entering commands into his console. Did Ever Plummet Sound accelerated smoothly — but slowly — away from the Ring, faint waves of nervousness sent out from Spiral as her station outlined the massive Shell fleet which lay less than three light-solon away.

“How is this ship made not-seen by the Enemy?” asked the narrat.

“I’d say that it was classified,” said Colonel Jardin, leaning back against the closed door, “but the truth is that I don’t know how it works, only that it works. Baffles, paint, emitter fields; they are all black-boxes to me.”

His nephew added “Don’t worry, the Plummet has snuck around Soia home systems through sensor nets dense enough to walk on. Whatever these Bugs of yours have won’t be enough to see her.”

Spiral’s mind-glow revealed her relief at hearing that. “That is good to be told.” A pinging signal from the control console in front of her prompted a flare of curiosity. “Also, what means this alert here?” She pointed to the display.

Colonel Jardin looked over, and Talon saw his face go pale. “[Alex, gun the engines. Get us out of here. Now.]”

Talon was pushed back into her seat by the sudden acceleration. She didn’t know exactly how fast the small ship could accelerate, but if it was enough to bleed through what must be very advanced inertial dampeners…

“What is it?” she asked.

“Slipspace tear. Big one. Looks like the Ring’s generating it, or something.”

“The Ring!?” Alexander Jardin exclaimed.

“It’s too clean to be anything but intentional — it must be some kind of defense mechanism, maybe triggered by that blast.”

The ship began to vibrate slightly, Talon’s seat shaking underneath her.

Ensign Jardin didn’t take his eyes off of his screen. “We’re still too deep in its well, it’s dragging us in after it!” His eyes flicked to the side, meeting Talon’s gaze for a fraction of a solon. “Tell your people to grab hold of something, this is going to get rough!”

Beryl had been transmitting the spoken conversation over sanzai the whole time. Talon could feel the spikes of alarm from the loroi throughout the vessel, as the alien craft began to shake around them. More and more violently so, intensifying by the solon.

One of the gallen blurted out <Their jump drive must not be calibrated correctly! It feels as if it is attempting to engage outside of a jump zone!>

Talon’s hands clenched and un-clenched. All of her tenoin training and carefully-learned instincts screamed at her to take control of the vessel, to turn it aside from the path it was on. But for a craft that she had never seen before? She would not know where to start. Unless—

She quickly said “Can you display the navigation data also on my screen?”

By way of an answer, Jardin tapped a command. The display in front of Talon’s seat blinked over to showing the still-normal-looking gravity well that had so confused the humans.

Of course, a normal gravity well did not have an ever-deepening hole growing inside it, centered on an ancient Ring.

And encompassing a fleeing ship.

One corner of Talon’s mind noted with grim satisfaction that the Shell fleet was scattering, fleeing in what could only be abject terror from the eye-searing tear in the fabric of space that had appeared near their formation.

That had already devoured eighteen ships, as its rate of expansion increased. Twenty-two, twenty-nine. Forty.

“Hold on!” Ensign Jardin shouted, as the ship creaked and groaned around them, straining under the brutal force imparted by blue-lined engines. “It’s going to catch us in thirty solon!”

Talon’s gaze flicked across the chart showing the exact curvature of the artificial gravity well that surrounded the tear. The rupture itself was a discontinuity too deep for the sensors to measure, but the gravity well forming around it seemed to be shaped as if from a normal gravity source, like the gas giant in whose shadow the action was unfolding.

And jumping from a normal gravity well was possible... although it had never been done from a well smaller than that cast by a star.

At least, it had never been done by any ship which had ever been seen again.

But as every child on their first diral learned, ‘the Hungry can’t be Picky.’

She blocked out the sheer pressure of the situation as best she could, concentrating on the smoothly-curving gravity plane as it bent and deformed in a wave. A wave that would catch up to the Did Ever Plummet Sound in less than twenty solon, by her estimation.

The layout of the controls was strange, but she managed to plot out a jump course. It would be rough, yes, and throw them out of the system in the wrong direction to rendezvous with Strikeforce-51 on their route, but it would have to do.

“Ensign! Put us on this path! As quick as can do!” she barked, pointing to the screen. “And engage your jump drive when the field hits this point!”

He glanced over, and froze for a heartbeat. Sent a wide-eyed stare at her. Questioning. Doubting.

But only for a heartbeat, and then he nodded.

Did Ever Plummet Sound yawed sharply, engines blazing as they forced her onto a new course.

Mere solon later, and the torn-open gaping maw of unreality swallowed her whole.

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Talon’s eyes stayed shut, still stinging with the pain of just how bright the flash had been. Had the jump worked?

Or was she dead, now sunk in the Endless Deeps alongside her sisters-in-arms?

“[Holy shit.]”

Then again, the tales passed down through uncounted generations of Tabenid sailors probably would have mentioned if the Endless Deeps also held strange, mind-blind aliens.

She blinked away the after-image seared into her eyes, looking around the cockpit.

Ensign Jardin tapped at the controls in front of him with clumsy hands, disbelief plain in his voice. “We’re through. Slipspace drive is nominal, no damage reported.” He stopped, and turned to look over at Talon. “You plotted a slipspace jump — something you’d just heard of — in, what, eight solon?”

“It was as if a normal jump, only from a shifting gravity well.” she demurred. “But is that unusual?”

“It’s an absolute miracle!” he cheered, leaning over to clap her on the back. She hoped he hadn’t hurt his hand on her armor.

Talon turned her head aside, flushing at the raw admiration in the alien’s eyes. “I did not in time finish plotting the emergence point. It seems that we may now be adrift unless a gravity well that is strong enough appears to grasp us back down.”

“Not a problem.” He responded, gesturing to the screen once more. “The drive’s got us held steady on this filament, and it looks like it goes on a ways without any cross-strands. The advance sensors will tell us when we sight an exit vector to take us back down, then we follow that route back to realspace.”

Talon blinked in surprise, but Beryl beat her to a spoken response. The listel tozet pushed herself up from the floor and asked “Your vessels can maneuver during a faster-than-light jump?”

Now that she mentioned it, Talon’s mind finally caught up to what had been eating at it. She hunted across the keyboard in front of her, finally finding the key that minimized the display.

With it gone, the pitch-black and featureless expanse ‘visible’ through the cockpit windows glared down at her. Was this what ships traveled through, in that brief moment between heartbeats during a jump? And why was the human craft… 'caught' here like a nimai whose intended solon-long flight out of the water had found it instead flopping on a boat's deck?

“Of course.” the human said to her, brows furrowing as he turned to Talon. “Uh, how do FTL jumps normally go for your ships?”

A corner of her mind flared with satisfaction that he asked her instead of the listel. But mostly, Talon focused on clearly echoing her years-ago instructors as she answered “The navigator calculates a travel vector towards the target gravity well, and the ship engages its jump drive at a precise point along that vector. The set of safe combinations of vector and position are called the ‘outbound jump zone.’ If the calculations are correct, the ship emerges near the target star, within a field that is smaller and is called the ‘inbound jump zone.’”

Beryl added “There is no maneuvering done during a jump. It is ballistic. It also takes less than a solon, too short to notice.”

“Instant transit, ballistic course.” Jardin murmured to himself, brow creasing as he stared through Talon. Then his eyes widened. “You ride a single filament section stretching from one star to another? But that can’t be longer than what, eight or ten light-years?”

“Yes.” Talon confirmed. Then her expression changed to match his, as the implication struck. “Human ships are not so limited in travel to only adjacent stars!?”

“No, and neither were the Soia.” he confirmed.

Beryl mused “But our jump drives are based off of ancient Soia designs found on planets near ours.”

The ensign snorted. “Then I think they left you a lemon.” He paused, one hand rubbing along his chin. “Or maybe it was a short-distance probe?”

<Remarkable.> sent Beryl, musing over the strategic implications clearly visible in her mind.

<Indeed so.> agreed Stillstorm. <See if it is possible to navigate to the system through which the Strikeforce should be navigating.>

“Can it be done that we turn around and move in the other direction from the system?” asked Talon.

"Once we get to a filament juncture, yeah. Should be one along soon. We've only justleft the system, now. Probably will—"

Before the human pilot could finish, another, more subdued alarm sounded. Underfoot, the steady hum of the Plummet’s engines underfoot changed pitch suddenly.

Alexander called out “Proximity alarm! We’ve got a major mass source drifting just ahead, right in the middle of the thread. Should be close enough to—” his voice caught. “Wait, is that a—?”

Simultaneously with his spoken words, a mental ping of confusion and curiosity radiated from Spiral. Centered on the new reading on her sensor station.

A very large reading.

"[I'll be damned.]" Colonel Jardin murmured.

“What thing is it?” asked Spiral.

The Colonel pointed to the scale indicators on the screen, and his nephew sucked in a rapid breath.

“It is a stricken ship, floating dead in slipspace. Part of one, anyways. A fragment of a much larger vessel, destroyed long ago.” The older human said, something… hungry in his voice. “A Soia moon-ship.”

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Author's Notes:

For anyone interested, Stillstorm's speech here before Tempest's final destruction is largely a paraphrasing of USN Admiral Halsey's speech at the decommissioning of USS Enterprise CV-6. Given that Halsey and Enterprise are vaguely comparable to Stillstorm and Tempest (Aggressive, sometimes-harsh but highly capable commanders; and the sole survivor of their respective classes, an ambitious design that made use of a newly-developed weapons system in a crude and inefficient way which would be improved upon later but left those early classes with some serious design flaws) it seemed appropriate.

Anyways, I've tried to weld Halo's Slipspace FTL system to Outsider's Jump Drive system in a way that should fit. The idea is that the Outsider-canon civilizations have only yet reverse-engineered a small part of the monstrously-complex Slipspace drives that the Soia Empire once had. Kinda like if some human post-apocalyptic group with a roughly ~1890-esque technology base found an ancient jetliner, didn't realize what the jet turbines were, but could understand the APU just fine.

[Urist]

Fireblade ran one hand along her armored forearm, checking the atmospheric seals near the joints. All good. The suit’s oxygen supply was full, the armored segments moved cleanly over each other, and the familiar pressure in the front of her mind confirmed that her helmet’s amplifier was working correctly.

In the crowded main cargo bay of the alien prowler, the only sounds heard were the clicking of metal on metal as soroin checked their own armor and weapons, turning then to double-check the equipment of the arms-sister next to her.

Even the human ODSTs were silent, following what could only be their own version of the same checks.

Acknowledgments were sent out distractedly as Stillstorm threaded her way through the busy crowd. The Lashret sent to Fireblade, <Teidar, you will keep a close guard on the command group on this boarding operation. The Soroin Tiris will lead her own caste-sisters.>

<Affirmative, Lashret.> Fireblade sent. It was as expected, with only the one teidar present. Uncounted battles against the Shells had confirmed just how much of a force-enhancer even a single one of her caste could be, and Fireblade knew without false modesty that she was exceptional even among teidar.

So when a mere sixty loroi set out to board an ancient Tonsillat — a Soia Dread-Star itself! — it was unsurprising that she would be called upon to focus solely on her own powers rather than lead other warriors.

But that was not the only cause for the freezing cold which danced along her nerves. During the march back to the dropship from the bunker facility where he had first been encountered, the human Colonel had mentioned much about the Soia and their soldiers.

Of particular interest to Fireblade had been their ‘Guards.’

Loroi granted the gift of telekinesis, much like herself. But in return for that gift, they had been… ‘engineered’ to be forever loyal to the Soia who commanded them. Loyal even to the point of death. When Tempest had been betrayed and the Empire split, very few loroi had stayed in the service of their creators.

But no Guards had changed side.

With her own Guards lying dead on the ship from which she had been hurled, Tempest had found herself the only warrior outside of the Empire who held telekinetic power. Had attempted to ‘encode’ that power into some of the loroi who now fought against the Soia.

Had succeeded at least in part, as Fireblade’s own existence proved.

But the Colonel had explained that Tempest’s true skills had never laid in such science, for all that she had advanced humanity’s understanding greatly. And that the Soia Guards had been designed by the very greatest of Soia augmentation engineers.

And he had warned just now that the Tonsillat would have its own Soia-made stasis chambers, as effective as those within which his warriors and ship had lain dormant for 270,000 years.

Fireblade had never had to fight another loroi in her life. Few had, since the war with the Enemy had sunk its harsh talons into the collective psyche of her people. Even the attempted coup against Emperor Greywind had been a mostly non-violent affair — by loroi standards, anyways — with the conspirators mostly resorting to legal trickery rather than more honest weapons.

Would that change, today?

One of the tenoin in the cockpit sent out a warning, along with what she could see from that vantage point. <We are entering an open hangar now. Nothing hostile sighted at this moment.>

And even though her sanzai was thin and limited by the distance between Fireblade and the cockpit at the other end of the ship, the teidar got enough of an impression of just what a ‘hangar’ the small prowler was nosing into.

<You could fit a fleet in there!> sent one of the gallen, awed.

<From what the humans have said, the Soia did fit fleets aboard their tonsillat.> noted a soroin.

The pilot’s vision was limited to her sensor readings, with the hangar itself completely unlit and the vast, featureless expanse of this ‘slipspace’ beyond providing no illumination. But the radar returns showed a vast, open space broken up by uncountable docking gantries jutting out into nothingness.

They sat in pristine condition, unmarred by the eons that had elapsed since the light of any sun had played across their metal surfaces.

<Then where is the fleet?> asked a younger soroin.

The other tenoin answered <The human colonel says that the small-ships docked here must have been used to evacuate the Dread-Star. The hangar-bay doors are locked in the open position, otherwise we would not have been able to dock here.>

The prowler rocked gently as it settled down on one of the docking arms. A wave of alerts from the soroin in the main hold presaged the arrival of the human warriors, minus their pilot. “Are your people ready?” asked the alien leader.

The other two critical loroi officers stepped up alongside Stillstorm. Beryl was no surprise, as an utterly-unprecedented event such as boarding a Soia Dread-Star was easily one that a listel would have given anything to record. And for the other…

Parat Tempo glanced at Stillstorm. <I am prepared.>

For once, there wasn’t even a hint of dislike in Stillstorm’s sending to her mizol minder. <Very well. You are prepared to speak to any surviving Soia personnel aboard, hostile or no?> If anything, the Lashret’s tone of thought was downright… excited.

<It has been some time since I have engaged in a hostile interrogation, but I have maintained my training.> Replied Tempo. Her mind-signature seemed truthful, but as an expert mizol it would have been simple enough for her to falsify that.

Fireblade mentally shrugged. Not her responsibility.

Stillstorm nodded to the human leader. “We are.”

“Good.” He hit the side of one fist against a button next to the top of the ramp, which began to open.

Fireblade trotted down the ramp, mind alert and probing for any signatures. <Nothing detectable. Uncertain if the Soia use the same psi-blocking material in their ships as they had constructed that bunker out of.>

“Do the Soia use mind-blocking metal in all of their constructions?” asked Tempo, following behind the teidar.

“Hmm? Oh. First I’ve heard of it, actually.” the human answered, surprisingly.

“Is that so? The facility in which we found you and your warriors was built from a metal which blocked all sanzai and mind-sensing.” replied Tempo.

Fireblade was only half-following the conversation, straining every one of her senses to detect any hint of a trap or danger. The hangar appeared completely empty, but who knew what might lurk aboard the ancient craft?

“Tempest never said anything about it, and I, well, didn’t exactly notice.”

The party reached the nearest cavernous door leading further into the ship. Easily five times Fireblade's own height, it towered over the loroi and loroi-oids arranged before it.

<The Soia sure liked to build things large.> noted a junior soroin.

<I’m more curious why they built things that large.> added one of the gallen. <People generally don’t build warships bigger than they have to, outside or inside. If you build a moon-sized warship and fill it with corridors that you can drive a dropship through...> she let her sanzai trail off.

That… was a very good point. Older Union capital ships — such as the lost Tempest — had their crew compartments built larger than strictly needed, but that was done to help maintain crew morale on long, extended patrols. A luxury of pre-War designs, really, and one whose minor inefficiency in wasted space had still only lasted up to the Vortex-class. The warships built after her — in the grim aftermath of the failed Semoset Offensive and mounting attrition at the front — squeezed their crew into tighter quarters, corridors narrow enough that two warriors had to step aside when passing by in order to avoid physical contact.

The Colonel waved one of his troopers forwards. The human soldier jogged over to one side of the colossal door, where a smaller portal was built into the wall. This one was still large enough for a loroi to enter, but did not extend all the way down to the floor underneath. Rather, it was a triangular doorway, point down, situated two mannal off of the deck.

“[This’ll only take a minute, sir.]” said the warrior in her own language — it had actually come as a surprise to many of the loroi when the ODSTs had removed their helmets aboard the Did Ever Plummet Sound and it turned out that most of them were human females. With the bulky armor that the aliens preferred, it was difficult to tell the difference when their faces were not visible.

The technician knelt next to the doorway and fished an electronic device out from a pocket at her belt. She held it up against a small panel alongside the hatch — presumably a control console.

Beryl looked longingly at the larger door. “It is certain that we cannot travel along the main corridors?”

“Not if you want to remain in one piece.” said the Colonel. “Soia built to last: if there’s still enough left of the ship’s systems to have the artificial gravity up, that means there’s still enough left of the security systems to kill you.”

“Yet you seemed certain that the maintenance tunnels are safe?” asked Tempo.

“We have the override codes for the tunnel systems, not the main corridors.”

“And how did you acquire those access codes?” asked the mizol.

“When the loroi split off, a large number of the Soia’s Engineers went with them.” He evidently anticipated Tempo’s question even as it was forming in her mind, and added “Their Engineer creations are single-minded: give them a machine to tinker with, and they’re happy. They don’t care who they work for or under what conditions.”

<Those would be of great interest to the Union.> sent Tempo, specifically sending to Fireblade and Stillstorm. “You said that there might be surviving Soia personnel aboard this tonsillat fragment. How will we recognize these ‘Engineers’?”

The ODST at the door straightened up just as the entrance itself cycled open. “[We’re through.]”

To Fireblade’s irritation, Stillstorm had agreed to the alien’s insistence that he went first down the tall, V-shaped tunnel. So the teidar was stuck watching his back as they went single-file down the corridor.

Over his shoulder, the human kept talking. “The Engineers are floating gas-bags. Tiny little head out front, long blue tentacles hanging underneath, body’s usually purple or blue. Your standard Soia construct.” He glanced back briefly, and Fireblade could see the smirk on his face through his depolarized visor. “And don’t worry, there’s probably going to be a good few of them in the maintenance-oversight compartment we’re headed to.”

Tempo’s satisfaction at that was easy to receive. <Teidar, precision in the use of your powers will be essential if any Soia personnel that we may encounter attempt hostilities. Any survivors, however hostile, are of great historical interest to the Union and must be left alive if at all possible. Are you prepared?>

Well, not every mission could be the fun kind where her only objective was ‘Turn Shells into fragments.’ <Affirmative, Mizol Parat.>

The maintenance tunnels indeed had clearly not been designed for walking creatures. At shoulder height, they were wide enough that Fireblade could stretch her arms out to each side without touching the walls, and yet she had to half-twist to put one foot directly ahead of the other on the very narrow horizontal floor. The sloping v-sides would arrest any sideways fall, at least.

By the way they chattered on in their language, the Helljumpers following behind her must not like it, either.

“[Look at that Guard strut! Work it, girl!]”

“[Really, Corporal?]”

“[I’m just admiring her form, sir! I haven’t been able to roll my hips like that in twenty years!]”

“[You think their suit mics aren’t recording, Anders? You're getting volunteered to explain to her when they ask, later.]”

They came to another T-intersection, Jardin taking the right-hand exit without pausing. Still no signs of life were detectable to Fireblade, not even out to the limits of her ability to sense. It was… eerie.

Fireblade struggled to wrap her mind around just how colossal the vessel was that they found themselves in. A genuine Tonsillat, a Dread-Star the size of one of Deinar’s moons.

And it had been only one of many in the Soia’s armadas…

As they passed each intersection, a quartet of soroin stayed behind to guard the side-passages and to relay sanzai messages to and from the ship. Their suit radios should be able to transmit across even the distance that the Colonel had quoted to the target compartment, but with trained warriors a sanzai relay was faster.

“Here we are.” The human commander finally said, stopping in the middle of a 4-way intersection. He pointed at one of the two wide doorways set into the side of the corridor. “Should be the damage-control center for this sub-sector of the ship. And… of course it’s got a stasis-field active on the whole compartment. How the Soia got that to keep running here in slipspace...”

He looked back at the loroi following behind him. “Be ready for live Soia personnel inside. We’re close enough to the main hangar that there might be some combatants, but it should be mostly just Engineers and Technicians. The emergency Stasis field would have engaged after the moon-ship broke apart, so expect anyone inside to be near-panicked and disorganized. The Engineers are no threat. The Technicians are big guys, four legs and two arms. They might try to fight, but they’re not really trained for it.”

<Teidar, you will be the first through the door.> Stillstorm commanded, as they formed up outside of the entryway. <Use your discretion in engaging any targets. But remember that we want as much preserved as possible.>

Beryl added her strong agreement to that message, radiating her giddy excitement to see actual working Soia machinery… and possibly even living Soia creatures.

“On four.” Jardin said, holding one hand in front of the door controls while the other gripped his blaster-like weapon tightly. “One, two, three… four.” He palmed the hatch open and stepped aside.

Immediately, Fireblade heard a conversation snippet from inside, as a low-pitched gravelly voice finished a sentence that had sat paused for over a quarter of a million years.

“—aged, we’re frozen.”

Fireblade stepped quickly through the door, eyes flicking back and forth as she took in the situation.

Diffuse but bright lighting illuminated the rectangular open chamber, walls covered in storage lockers and data displays tightly interspersed with power lines, pipes and manual controls. The sort of thing you would find lining any starship’s engineering spaces.

Closer to the middle of the room, six control consoles were arranged in a circle, displays facing inwards. In their midst was an elevated platform, reached by a shallow ramp which extended downwards and pointed to the entrance in which Fireblade stood framed.

And at those consoles were… aliens.

No, cousins.

Centauroid creatures, skin as blue as Fireblade’s own on their un-gloved hands, stood at the stations. Two upper arms tapped at a narrow keyboard raised nearly to their long, elongated faces. Two lower arms — or forward legs — manipulated larger control surfaces, placed at a lower height. And the rear ‘legs’, tipped with the same sort of ‘hand’ with its loroi-esque form marred by an elongated palm and thickened fingers that the front legs bore, sat open-palmed on the floor.

One of the fellow Soia creations looked up from its work-station, two wide-set eyes meeting Fireblade’s own. The creature blinked. Was it hostile? She could see no weapons on its un-armored suit, and its mind-glow betrayed no sense of alarm.

It looked away, back towards the raised dais. Then spoke in the same deep voice that she had heard earlier, “Ma’am! A relief team has arrived!”

“Understood, 304-18.” came a new voice, source hidden beyond the lip of the raised dais in the center of the compartment. “It is most fortunate to see that the Fleet has arrived as instructed.” The speaker stepped closer, rising into view above the platform.

A loroi.

It had to be — there could be nobody else underneath that armor. Maybe a human, technically, but the cold weight settling in Fireblade’s gut told her just who — what — this was.

Fireblade had never before in her life hesitated in a fight. But… that had been against the Shells. Hated enemies of all that she had ever known. Despoilers and defilers, utterly alien.

This was an ancient being of her own species, an eons-old glimpse into the past brought to life. And there was no hostility in that mind-glow, as… 'unfamiliar' as it was.

The figure froze as she came into view, her helmet boasting an elaborate raised crest which danced along her brow-line and wrapped back over where her ears would be.

A Soia-made amplifier, so much older — and perhaps more dangerous — than the Soia-inspired one built into Fireblade’s own helmet.

The Guard’s neutral expression remained, even as her eyes swept the loroi before her.

Settled on a point just behind Fireblade, near the doorway. She knew on who.

The Colonel.

A mighty wave of psychokinetic force rocked Fireblade back on her feet. Yelps of alarm and pain rose from the soroin behind her as they were hurled back into the corridor.

Where another loroi — another teidar — would have screamed over sanzai to stun her opponents, the Guard bellowed aloud “ABOMINABLE TRAITORS!”

<Teidar, neutralize her!> sent Stillstorm, even as the Lashret swung her blaster rifle up to position.

“Signal the—!” the Guard’s next shout, clearly directed at one of her subordinates, cut off as she froze.

Fireblade stepped further into the room, gaze locked on her target. It was a gamble — she was trusting that the other loroi — and humans — at her back would see to any other threat, while she focused on hammering a mental attack as deeply into the Guard’s mind as she could.

It was… actually far easier than she had expected. Where another teidar or mizol well-practiced in mental combat would have resisted the heavy but crude spike of pure mental force, the Guard’s defenses folded like those of a fuzz-headed girl fresh from her diral.

That said, Fireblade could feel the ancient loroi’s mind still pulsing with fury, remaining conscious even after such an attack. An anger which only grew by the solon, at her confinement within her own body. If Fireblade took her attention off the target for so much as a solon, the Guard would regain control over her muscles… and more importantly, over her powers.

Time for plan M.

Sweat beaded on Fireblade’s brow, trickling down to pool against her amplifier as she kept just enough mental force to keep the Guard mentally pinned… and poured the remainder of her ability into her thermokinesis.

Assuming the Guard weighed about as much as a modern-day loroi inside her armor, and that her biology worked about the same…

Four degrees. Eight degrees.

Twelve.

Fireblade felt the fading of her target’s mind-glow a solon before the Guard’s face flushed a dark blue, an autonomic response that worked around Fireblade’s block on conscious mental command. The ancient loroi’s chest heaved as her pulse raced, furious eyes still locked on Fireblade.

Eyes that stayed open, pouring hatred into Fireblade even as the Guard’s mind-signature faded rapidly into unconsciousness.

Kept fading.

<Doranzer, do you have the tools to stabilize heat-stroke?> asked Fireblade, still not taking her attention off of her target.

No response.

<...Doranzer?>

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Stillstorm shot the first centauroid as it drew a rifle-shaped object from underneath its desk. The power-four shot burned through the alien and charred a glowing-red divot into the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Soia-made or not, these aliens weren’t exactly tough.

The soroin behind her took their shots at the other aliens, blasters set to lower power ratings as planned. Multiple shots volleyed into the other targets, and they slumped onto their desks. Stunned, but alive.

Stillstorm strode forwards, carbine sweeping across the room. No conscious mind-signatures detected in the room. But… <Watch those passages.> she highlighted a dozen small holes spread throughout the walls of the compartment.

With no further detectable threats, she checked behind her for the status of her troops. That Guard’s psychokinetic push had swept across the loroi crowding into the room, still packed densely in the doorway.

Three concussions, four broken arms, a lot of angry sub-verbal sanzai… and one soroin sprawled against the wall, helmet twisted at an unnatural angle.

Doranzer mazil-toza Desire was already kneeling over the young warrior, hands racing to get the fallen soroin’s helmet off. One of the ODSTs dropped next to her, taking over. Desire yanked a nerve-splice from the medical kit on her thigh and slapped it onto the back of the girl’s neck as soon as the helmet was clear.

The soroin’s mind-glow halted its decline, just as it had sat on the precipice of guttering out.

Desire sagged with relief, one hand shooting out to grab the ODST’s shoulder for momentary support.

Situation stabilized, Stillstorm followed Colonel Jardin into the center of the room, half-receiving as the soroin organized a casualty team to carry the wounded into a more sheltered position away from the entrance.

“Well, that was surprising.” The human commander drawled, standing over the nearest stunned centauroid. “Didn’t expect a Guard all the way out here; alone, too. These bastards—” he nudged the slumped alien “—aren’t much of a threat, if you’ve got your eyes open.”

<Are those… Mozeret?> asked Beryl, stepping close.

Stillstorm wondered the same. The shape did match the supposed shape of the extinct Soia-Liron species. And it wasn’t like that was a particularly common arrangement for organic life. It was pretty much just the Mozeret… and the Shells.

The maybe-mozeret twitched, one rear-leg kicking across the floor towards Beryl.

She leaped nimbly over the attack, and Jardin slammed the butt of his rifle against the side of the creature’s head. The Soia construct slumped down further, upon closer inspection now more… languid than before. “Keep a weapon trained on them at all times, if you don’t see their insides on the outside. They like to play dead.”

ODSTs and soroin swept through the room, checking every angle and corner that might hide a threat.

Now for the prize… Stillstorm signaled the gallen forwards, at the same moment as the Helljumper who had opened the hangar door raced over to the nearest console. Parat Tempo supervised the gallen, while Stillstorm leaned over the ODST’s shoulder, Jardin at her other side. Room now secured, Stillstorm leaned her blaster carbine against the console.

“Your girls got the jump on them. They didn’t even have time to lock the computers.” The Colonel traced one finger across the screen. And whistled. “I’ll be damned, I was right.” He looked over at Stillstorm. “You’re standing aboard Grand Unity — or a chunk of her, anyways. The Soia Council’s own flagship.”

Stillstorm narrowed her eyes. “The same vessel aboard which Tempest was last known to be.”

“The very same.” the human responded flatly. He turned back to the human warrior next to him, conversing rapidly in their own language.

<Lashret, the data transfer will take approximately five-hundred solon.> one of the gallen reported.

Stillstorm met Tempo’s eyes. <Then that is how much time you have, Parat.> She indicated the six remaining live Soia constructs.

The mizol nodded and knelt by the Guard first. A soroin had removed the comatose loroi’s amplifier, but still both Tempo and Fireblade set an ungloved hand against the Guard’s head. Better to play it safe.

<Mental signature is faint but alive. Still readable.> confirmed Tempo. <Well done, Pallan.>

Putting their muted sanzai to one side as they went to work pulling what information they could from the ancient loroi’s mind, Stillstorm strode over to where most of the humans had gathered around one of the remaining mozeret. They had wrestled it away from the console and into an open patch of floor, an armored soldier kneeling on each of its limbs.

Colonel Jardin nudged its face with his boot. “Wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty.”

The mozeret’s eyes blinked open and swept around the room, before coming to focus on the human leader crouched in front of it. Voice muffled by a face lying flat on the ground, it ground out “You.”

“Me.” replied the Colonel, in an eerily friendly tone. “See, I’ve got a few minutes while my friends work over your boss. So why not get a few questions answered?”

“You will find no answers here, creature.”

Jardin drew his knife, pointing its narrow tip first at one of his subject’s eyes, and then at the other. The mozeret tracked the gleaming weapon no more than a finger’s-width from its eyes, but to the Soia construct’s credit it did not flinch. That said, she could sense the growing fear bubbling upwards in its mind.

The Colonel’s tone of voice was unchanged. “Oh, you guys always know just what to say. I always find answers, and you Technicians are the most fun to play with. See, the Office trained me to get cooperation out of people, even if I had to go through all twenty fingers and toes. And here you’ve got a full set of thirty!”

Stillstorm watched, intrigued despite herself. Normally, the exact… 'techniques' used to gather information from a resisting subject were handled largely by mizol specialists, and the interrogation itself took place within the subject’s mind. It was interesting to observe how a species that lacked the ability to use such methods would try to overcome that handicap.

Sometimes it was useful to ‘soften up’ the subject before the mizol went to work — the pallan kneeling a few paces behind Stillstorm was well-experienced at that — but to Stillstorm’s understanding that mainly served to weaken their mental defenses rather than prompt an actual answer. Useful for subjects attempting to hold a lotai against their interrogators, but always with a risk of frying the mind before any answers could be extracted.

And given the inherent untruthfulness of spoken words, how could one gain anything useful from a subject compelled to speak aloud to their clearly-hated foe?

The mozeret’s eyes tracked the knife as the human traced it along the being’s limbs, not yet applying enough force to pierce the light-gray jumpsuit that the mozeret wore.

A mixed pulse of irritation, curiosity, and a trace of disgust came from the listel who observed alongside Stillstorm. <These are the only mozeret known to exist! To have ever been found alive!> she broadcast to nobody in particular.

<There remain four that are unharmed.> Stillstorm sent, keeping the ‘for now.’ part to herself. She indicated the remaining aliens as soroin dragged them into a clear area to hold at blaster-point.

The Lashret highlighted their size, comparing it to the cramped quarters aboard the UNSC prowler. <Although we have no way of safely taking even one back to the Union for study.>

<Yes, but...> the listel’s sanzai trailed off into a churning pool of dissatisfaction.

“[Doc, you got a reading yet?]” asked the colonel, playing the knife-tip underneath a fingernail of the frozen mozeret.

Terror flooded off of the centauroid alien, but deep undercurrents of a steely resolve welled up throughout, which Stillstorm could not help but respect. It remained to be seen just how long that resolve would hold up.

“[Yes, sir.]” said the UNSC’s field doranzer, kneeling over the mozeret and slowly waving some sort of datapad over the back of its head. “[Got two pings, pushed all the way down. He’s hiding something, all right.]”

“[Let’s not give him the chance. Plug him.]”

The human doranzer withdrew a cable from one of the many pockets lining his waist, attaching one end to the datapad. The other sported two sharp needles, perhaps as long as a loroi’s thumb but narrow enough that Stillstorm had to squint to make out their form. The doranzer tapped a button, and the two probes started vibrating shrilly.

Just as the mozeret’s eyes shot wide-open and looked back, the ODST plunged the device into the back of the centauroid’s skull.

“[Scan’s running, sir. Got one scooped already.]”

“[Good. Temperature?]”

“[Oh, he’s cooking. Maybe a few seconds… there we go. Both nodes scooped.]”

The doranzer yanked the cable out of the mozeret’s head, wiping the mixed streaks of gray and cobalt-blue tissue off on the alien’s jumpsuit.

Blue blood dripped from the tiny holes left behind, pulsing out even as the mozeret’s body began to twitch. The ODSTs stood and released its limbs, letting it thrash weakly on the floor as they stood back.

“An interesting technique, Colonel.” observed Stillstorm.

The human doranzer unplugged the datapad and handed it to Jardin, setting to work fine-cleaning the other end of the cable with another machine from his belt.

“Thank you, Lashret.” replied the colonel distractedly, his attention focused on the datapad. “Hmm. Bastard didn’t know all that much, anyways. Ship jumped to slipspace right at the moment of destruction. Doesn’t know what happened exactly, only that they suddenly lost contact with the other segments, and—” he froze.

<Great.> one of the soroin sent. <The humans have a computerized mizol.> Her side-channels conveyed the loroi’s unease at the concept.

On the other end of the response spectrum, the listel’s earlier unhappiness had been swept away by a burst of interest. <They have a computer that can interact with the mind!> She sent. <In field conditions, even, and very rapidly!>

<But rather destructively, it seems.> observed a junior doranzer, peering down at the still-twitching corpse. <Perhaps not the most useful interrogation technique, but it is an impressive adaptation to the humans’ limitations.>

“’And’?” prompted Stillstorm.

The ODST colonel’s voice was flat as he said “And the last Soia mind aboard faded shortly before the ship was destroyed.”

Tempest.

Stillstorm frowned. “The mozeret could detect mind-signatures? You had said that that ability was restricted to the Soia.”

“A damn rock can feel when there’s a conscious Soia nearby. It’s like a ‘vibration’ inside your mind, very deep. A backdoor into your mind, propped open and you can’t close it. Gets stronger when she’s angry, or when she focuses on you in particular.” He kicked the dead mozeret at his feet, hard enough to shift the bulky corpse. “They engineered their servants to be especially vulnerable to it. If this bastard felt them fade, that means either the last Soia here decided to calm down and deactivate her greatest weapon, or… she died.”

He handed the datapad back to his doranzer and looked over at Stillstorm. “Guess which is more likely.”

Tempo had finished her work, and walked past the two of them on her way to the remaining four mozeret captives. “You had known from the moment you realized how long you had slept that it was unlikely that Tempest had survived.”

“Still hurts to hear the exact moment.” He shook his head. “Oh, and if you’re going to interrogate those other ones, work fast. The Soia started building failsafes into their minds towards the end of the War. Cooks their brains from the inside-out in only a few seconds if you poke them.”

At his words, the other mozeret struggled against the soroin holding them down, but went limp as a barrage of mental attacks from the loroi battered their minds back into submission. The soroin kept weapons trained on them, just in case.

It was weird to see sanzai attacks — especially the untrained blows of soroin rather than teidar or mizol specialists — being so effective against aliens that lacked the ability to send. Like firing a blaster whose bolt was both invisible and silent, the only sign of any action being the impact on its target.

<Two hundred solons left on the data transfer, Lashret.> sent the gallen ranzadi overseeing the console hacking. <There is… a lot here. We’ve had to swap out full drives several times already.> Her excitement rushed through the young loroi’s side-channels. <Maintenance and repair instructions — detailed ones! — for weapons, communications systems, reactionless drives, power systems… it’s all there.> she shook her head in astonishment. <When we get this back to the Union, the Shells’ existence is going on a countdown. And not a long one.>

Mental cheers erupted around the room. An appropriate prize, in return for Tempest’s loss.

<Do these files include details on a ‘slipspace drive’?> sent Stillstorm. Building better ships and weapons was one advantage. A very major one, yes, and one that held the potential to permanently shift the ever-changing tide of the war in favor of the Union. But if loroi warships could flat-out navigate around the border systems where the Shells parked their bivouac divisions…

The war would be as good as won.

<Only some, Lashret.> the gallen responded, tapping at the controls. <The references point to elsewhere in the—>

A bright flash of light and burst of flame engulfed the console, the gallen throwing one arm up to cover her eyes as a column of fire jetted from the console. Without hesitation, she dove into the flames, armor blackening in moments as she yanked the last drive from the console and flung it to the side.

Soroin rushed forwards as the gallen pushed herself back and toppled to the ground. Her hands scrabbled at her helmet visor, mind-signature leaking agony.

“[That’s new. The paranoid fucks put thermite charges in their damn computers, now!?]” said one of the Helljumpers, as people around the room stepped away from the remaining consoles.

Alarm and concern raced around the room, as warriors looked for any further trap.

And from behind her, Stillstorm detected the faintest, nearly-suppressed flare of satisfaction.

She whirled to face the Guard… whose mind-signature now hovered just above consciousness. And who was focusing on—

Stillstorm didn’t wait to see what would happen when the ancient loroi completed thermokinetically heating the charge pack in her confiscated energy rifle.

The two soroin — young girls, really, too young to have developed the same mental precision of awareness that Stillstorm’s century-and-a-quarter had granted her — yelped as the Guard at their feet recoiled back, a knife-handle as wide as their palms suddenly jutting from the Soia construct’s face.

“Nice throw.” commented the Colonel. “I’d thought that thing was just for show.”

“Only a foolish warrior carries a weapon that she is not ready to use.” said Stillstorm, planting one foot on the Guard’s neck and yanking the long-bladed knife from the fallen construct's face. She flicked her wrist, spattering cobalt blood and gray brain-matter on the wall. After a moment’s thought, she wiped the blade completely clean using the Guard’s own hair, and returned it to its scabbard.

A ritual humiliation that would have meant nothing to the ancient loroi, but one that helped focus Stillstorm’s anger. <Doranzer. Her status?>

<She will live, Lashret.> replied the medic. <But we do not have the equipment to treat her fully, not until we return to a Union ship. Flecks from the chemical flame burned holes through her visor; her eyes are non-functional.>

<Status on the data?> Stillstorm sent to the remaining gallen, who was inspecting the data drive which her caste-sister had sacrificed her vision to save.

<We have a partial repair schematic for what is labeled as a ‘jump drive,’ Lashret. Further analysis will have to wait for proper facilities.>

Stillstorm fixed her attention on the listel tozet, and indicated the injured gallen. <Have this incident recorded for that girl’s award ceremony, once we return to the Union.>

[Urist]

“—ways shifting. Normally the ship’s AI would keep track of that, but they’re, uh, not around anymore.” Ensign Jardin continued his explanation on the basics of slipspace navigation, Talon’s mind whirling as she followed along. It was a lot more complex than calculating jump trajectories.

She reviewed what he had told her. “So without these intelligences to perform a great part of the tracking of these ‘threads,’ it is not so simple to navigate between distant stars.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Talon looked over to where Spiral dozed in her reclining seat, dream-signature radiating her contentedness. The younger Jardin had showed her how to turn the headrest so that it braced her head at a comfortable angle rather than let it hang at an orientation certain to produce a pained neck.

Five-hundred more solons until they would switch places, Talon getting her own much-desired nap while her diral-sister got to be the one wrapping her mind around the complexities of slipspace.

Although judging by the occasional image which leaked out of the sleeping narrat’s mind, perhaps Talon shouldn’t wake her quite that soon. She might be… 'disappointed.'

<Tenoin Arrir.> Sent one of the soroin guards posted next to the narrow doorway that led from the hangar further into the massive Soia ship. <Message from the Lashret; they are on their way back. Prepare to accommodate wounded: one severe burn injury, non-mobile; one neck injury, non-mobile; three minor and mobile.>

<Affirmative, Soroin Pideir.> Talon replied.

She stood from her seat, Ensign Jardin looking over in surprise before his own radio squawked at him in English, presumably repeating the same message.

Talon carefully stepped past Spiral, and through the open door into the corridor outside. The careful work of the doranzer earlier had meant that all but two of the fold-out medical cots had been returned to their stowed positions.

Two soroin still slumbered in induced unconsciousness, the two that had fought alongside Talon in that desperate last stand against the Shells aboard the Ring. Truly dalid had shone upon her, both by the humans rescuing her two wounded sisters-in-arms and also by leaving Talon untouched. If she had been unconscious too, she’d have missed talking to Ensign Alexander!

She pulled down two more of the folding cots and locked their arms. A clever idea, squeezing the medical station into this corridor... if you were a mind-blind alien who wasn’t bothered by it leaving only barely enough room in the corridor for two people to pass, and then only if they really pressed close. How these aliens could stand that—

Something pushed up against her back.

Talon managed to keep the yelp contained to her mind as Ensign Jardin squeezed past her. It was still weird how the human appeared out of nowhere, his mind still completely invisible. “’Scuse me. Here, the loroi-pattern stabilizers are behind this panel.”

“Again thanks, Alexander Jardin.”

“Just ‘Alexander’ is fine. Or ‘Alex’ if you prefer. Don’t need to be too specific when there’s only us ten humans around. Did your report give any details on the injuries? I just heard one with a burn.”

<Soroin Pideir, was there any further information on the injuries? Ensign Jardin is preparing the medical equipment.>

<He is cross-trained as a doranzer?>

Good question. “How is it that you come to know how to respond to such injuries?”

“I’ve flown enough casevac flights over my career. Too many… or not enough, depending how you look at it. The equipment’s standardized, even on a prowler.” he replied without looking up, checking the cot legs. “Good job, by the way. These are locked correctly.”

Talon scoffed, but still smiled as she replied. “It is a simple system.” To the pideir, she sent <He says that he has been a pilot on many flights apparently involving wounded warriors.>

“You’d be surprised how many grunts forget to lock the middle leg, though.”

Instead of the soroin, it was Doranzer Mazil-toza Desire’s mind that next sent to Talon, faint from distance but receivable. <Gallen Ranzadi Greyrune has suffered second-category burns to her face and upper torso. She is stable, but we are keeping her unconscious. Soroin Pideir Wildfire remains in a coma, but her autonomous functions continue through the nerve-splice.>

<Understood.>

Once she relayed the information to him, Jar— Alexander pulled another panel open. “They’ll want the field-surgery suite, then. I’m afraid our regenerator’s still broken, though.”

Talon looked over the small volumes that the medical cabinets took up. “You have placed a regenerator in here?”

“Right now all we have is a regenerator-shaped pile of parts.” He froze, and then made a snapping sound with two fingers. He then touched one finger to part of the headset he wore. “[Colonel, did you pick up any Engineers?]”

“[I’m afraid the store was out of stock; they gave us an IOU and asked us to come back tomorrow.]” Talon could hear the human leader’s tinny voice as he chuckled, loud in the confined corridor. “[Now, we did ‘Rescue four Engineers from the Soia’s Clutches’ on the way back.]”

“It is good news?”

“Yeah.” Alexander said, pulling open the largest cabinet and carefully unfolding the maze of interlocking arms stowed within. “We’ll have a working regenerator a few minutes after they get back. We’ll also have at least one very happy Engineer — the gasbags love fixing things.”

Talon tried to picture a flying Pipolsid, with a gallen’s work-belt draped around its bulbous features. The thought drew a smile to her face, despite the grave injuries of her arms-sisters. “It seems that this will be very interesting to see happen.”

Soon enough, heavy bootfalls on the entrance ramp echoed through the small ship as the expedition returned. From the sound of it, successfully. And—

“That is an Engineer?” Talon asked as she watched the bulbous creature floating unsteadily into the ship.

“Yup. Cute little fella, isn’t he?”

It looked nothing like a Pipolsid. The brightly-colored flesh that she could see between the tool-bearing coat draped over its back did match the Soia’s preferred color palette, but that was about it.

Talon took a step back as the creature whistled sharply, smoothly descending to hover protectively over the tiny regenerator. Thin tentacles probed the machinery, twisting their way deep inside.

“Oh yeah, he’s happy to see it.” said Jardin.

“That whistling is a language?” Talon asked, peering at the strange alien. Its mind-signature was… ‘orderly’ and rather single-minded. So much so that it was difficult to read, actually.

“Yeah. It’s pretty complex, but you learn to recognize a bunch of the basic messages. For the rest,” he waved the datapad in his hands. “there’s translators.”

Unfortunately, while these Soia creations seemed to be many things, one thing they weren’t was ‘small.’ The space aboard Did Ever Plummet Sound was rapidly eaten up as the loroi and humans filed aboard after the wounded had been moved in. A few of the last in were forced to sit on the ramp as it rose to become a slanted floor.

Talon had seen the UNSC technology perform miracles, but apparently keeping the atmosphere aboard the prowler crisp when sixty-odd loroi returned after a combat mission and worked their hair out of their helmets was beyond even their abilities.

“[Farewell, fresh air. It nice while it lasted. Never thought I’d miss the recycled breeze of a Soia moon-ship, of all places.]”

“[Back into the vanilla hotbox, eh?]”

“[Yup. Would you believe that that used to be my favorite flavor of ice cream? Used to.]”

"[Corporal, I've met your husband. I absolutely would believe—]"

Talon returned to the cockpit, taking her seat as Jardin followed in. “Bob’s got the regenerator working again, and your medic’s seeing to that engineer of yours.”

That was good news, but… “’Bob’?”

“Uh, ‘Bobs When Anxious’. The Engineer who got to the machine first.”

“That seems to be a very unusual name.” She wasn’t sure what names Pipolsid used for themselves, but she was pretty sure that she would never find one with a name like that. Although she understood why the humans seemed to like applying nicknames to so many things, when they were limited to the glacial pace of spoken speech.

“Engineers are a funny bunch.” Taking his seat, he brought up the controls and spoke into his headset once more. “We’ll be ready for takeoff in fifty solons.”

“Good to hear.” the Colonel said from behind them, framed in the doorway. “Make for the system I sent to your console. If the Lashret and I have our maps aligned correctly, that should be the one that her Strikeforce is still transiting.”

“Got it.” Alex brought up the display once more, and smoothly resumed his earlier slipspace lesson to Talon. “See, this thread here takes us back to the Ring’s system, but the sensors can just barely make out a cross-filament that intersects it just short of the system boundary. So if we...”

Talon followed along as he walked through the complex mechanics of plotting a slipspace journey with an ease that indicated long experience. And yet he seemed so young — or perhaps human facial features did not show age the same way that a loroi’s did?

Either way, the ease with which he walked through the steps and his flowing speech more than overcame the plodding slowness of taking in information solely through spoken verbiage.

If she’d had instructors like this back at the Tenoin Academy, she’d have been a Baistil by now, easily!

<You also might not have missed your encounter opportunity at the end of the diral trials!> sent Spiral, stifling a yawn as she stretched in her seat.

<Because I would not have talked back to the instructors, yes.> Talon replied, smiling despite herself. <And no other reason.>

<I think that might have been a useful test of concentration, actually.> her diral-sister continued, resting her chin on one fist and focusing on pretending that the idea was a deep, serious thought and not the idle daydream of a young warrior. <’Can the cadet focus on a lecture’s content when the lecturer is a cute male?’> A fragment of her recently-ended dream slipped through the sanzai. <Maybe shirtless...>

<That course would have been a disaster for a certain Maia-born Narrat that I know.> replied Talon.

<But what a fun disaster!>

Talon shook her head with a warm smile, even as the prowler leapt out of the hangar bay. She changed the subject. <Enjoy your nap?>

<Mmm.> Spiral sent back, along with a bubble of pleasure as she bent over and stretched her back. <Of all their technology that is so far beyond ours, somehow pilot seats are the one that surprises me the most. Maybe we can get them installed in our own fighters? I would sleep in the hangar bay; think of the improvement to squadron readiness!>

<Improvement, yes... until we have to keep shooing young soroin out of our craft before launch.>

<Then we teach them to stick to their guns and armories!> Spiral sent with a mental wink.

Shockingly soon, Jardin called for Talon’s attention again. “Coming up on our hop to that filament. It keeps going further than the sensors can see, but it looks like it takes us towards that system your Lashret wanted.” He pointed to the screen. “The drive routines should nudge us over automatically, but it’s worth keeping an eye on it up to the point of transition, anyways. If you miss your exit vector and try to force a sharp hop, you can fall right out of slipspace and risk tearing the drive apart.”

“You speak as if one of experience.”

“Nah, just good instructors.” the human demurred. He looked over at her, a faint smile playing over his rounded-yet-exotic features. “Navy’s got the best there are.” The smile dropped, and he looked away. “Were, anyways.”

Talon’s heart clenched. “Your instructors’ honor lives on in you, yet still. Even today just now, you helped deliver a blow that was felt by the Soia’s remains.”

“We did, didn’t we?” he said redundantly. Did humans speak that strangely in their own language, or was it just an artifact of how they spoke Trade?

Spiral added, “You helped our team of warriors not become dead on that Ring, also. Thanks ever so from all us!”

That brought a smile back to his lips. “Glad to help. Oh, and here we go on that hop.”

Talon leaned back in her seat, listening closely but also watching the human as he animatedly explained the mechanics of how the maneuver was carried out. The display’s glow lit his face, casting shadows that danced as he spoke. In the dim light, he could pass for a loroi, if one ignored just how tall he was.

But she could get used to this view.

<Me too!> sent Spiral. <Now if only a certain Plunger hadn’t been first to take the seat that sits next to him, I wouldn’t have to choose between enjoying the view and being comfortable.>

Talon’s gaze flicked to Spiral at the side-facing sensor station, sitting with her neck turned fully to one side, watching the display as their human pointed out— as their human instructor pointed out the exact moment of the hop.

“And we’re over. The drive’ll keep us locked on course from here on, and with this it’s set to let us know when either we approach the destination system or the sensors pick up a filament that leads more directly to it.”

He highlighted their new course. “The textbooks say that in the old days they couldn’t see more than a light-year or two out on the filaments at a time. Can you imagine navigating like that? It’d be like driving a car at night with just a flashlight to see with.”

Alex glanced at Talon, just as her gaze flicked back from Spiral. He paused, frowning, before turning around to see the tenoin narrat rubbing at her neck with one hand and squirming to sit sideways in the chair. “Oh, the seats can turn, be more comfortable. Here, let me—” Before Spiral could react, he leaned over and pulled on a control at the base of her seat.

The seat snapped around to face forwards, Spiral letting out a brief mental yelp at the sudden motion.

<Such alarm, from the diral-sister who got the instructor motion-sick during flight school?> Talon sent, laughing.

Spiral replied by lifting one leg, letting Alex’s trapped hand loose from where it had become caught. Her sanzai wordlessly conveyed just where it had ended up pinned.

Through the armored plating of the combat suit that Spiral still wore — and Talon, too, largely because there simply wasn’t room aboard the cramped ship for a bunch of empty armor — she hadn’t actually felt anything, but that didn’t stop her broadcast imagination from filling in the gaps… or a gap, anyways.

“Huh. That was fast. The spring must have, uh, been changed recently.” Alex turned back and busied himself at the display, a faint alien-red blush rising.

Talon raised one eyebrow, stifling laughter at the situation. <A plausible explanation.> Her sub-channels broadcast her recognition that he was telling the truth, though.

<Well I hope he expected just that to happen!> sent Spiral with a grin.

<I doubt it.> Talon replied. <He seems too professional to do anything like that intentionally… on duty, at least.> She eyed her diral-sister. <As are we.>

Spiral agreed, but <One more good reason to get back to the Strikeforce so we get some time off duty!>

A previously unnoticed mind-signature at the cockpit door brightened, as if suddenly appearing from a great distance. <I see that you are making good progress.> Mizol Parat Tempo’s sanzai was level, but she did not bother to hide her amusement as she glanced between the three of them. <On our travel and other objectives.>

<We have learned how to navigate this ship through slipspace!> Spiral beamed.

<Yes, that is a laudable achievement.> sent the Mizol. <Our time until arrival?>

Talon peered at the display, now knowing where to look for the data. From the velocity along the filament, even assuming the worst-case scenario as Alex had described it... <Four thousand solon, Mizol Parat.>

<Understood.> Without another word, the diplomatic officer — the spy — turned and left.

Talon was glad that tenoin rarely had to deal with the subterfuge-enamored mizol caste very often at all. They were… not what warriors should aspire to be. For that matter, Stillstorm’s ‘suggestion’ was probably actually the Mizol’s idea in the first place.

And now that Talon had come around to seeing Alex for the warrior he evidently was, outright manipulating him that way felt doubly wrong. Even if — unless human males were even more different from their loroi counterparts than she had already seen — he was unlikely to object.

She and Spiral were veteran tenoin with strong builds, fierce characters, and enough kill markers between the two of them to cover a decent portion of Tempest’s briefing room wall! Of course he’d be interested!

“Hmm?” Alex started, turning around just as the door clicked closed. “Did you say something?”

Apparently those tiny ears were as much of a hindrance as they seemed. “Mizol Parat Tempo was asking on how long time until we are arriving at the system.” Spiral explained… mostly truthfully. There were advantages to spoken speech, after all.

“Oh. That’s, uh—”

“Four thousand solon.” Talon said. “We told her.”

Alex smiled at her. “Just right!” Heavier footsteps sounded outside the door, and he glanced back at it. “Which should give us more than enough time for...”

“[Chow time.]” said Colonel Jardin, holding out three plastic-wrapped packets. He continued in Trade. “You’ve got a choice between mystery-orange, mystery-green, and mystery-brown.”

“The Section-Three Specials, eh? I’ll take brown. Even ONI can’t over-promise with ‘brown.’” Alex caught the tossed package. He waved it at Talon with one hand and explained. “Travel rations. We don’t exactly have the room to fold the mess station out, so they’re it. We’ve got some in back that are formulated for loroi, but I suspect your people have brought your own.”

It would be interesting to sample some of the food that her ancient forebears had preferred, but also not a good idea while she was on duty. Who knew how culinary tastes had changed over the eons — maybe they’d all eaten like Perreinids back then!

She shuddered at the thought.

“Heh.” Alex nodded in mistaken understanding. “Can’t say I blame you. Section Three had a… lot of successes during the Wars, but their field rations were a bit of a uh, mixed bag. If a human can keep ‘em down, they’ll keep us running a day or two at a time, though.” He pointed the package at her. “The loroi ones would keep you going for the better part of a week.” Alex chuckled. “Funny story, really. The human rations were a bit of an offshoot, first made for—”

“Alex.” his uncle said.

“—For, uh, people who burn a lot of calories.” Alex completed. “Marines, ODSTs,” he looked back at the Colonel with a thin smirk, “ONI spooks on long-duration missions, and the like.”

“That is seeming useful.” Talon nodded. “Maybe not so much for us tenoin, not commonly. But for soroin and teidar, infantry that fight on ground far from constant supply, yes.”

Colonel Jardin glanced aside, and then stepped back into the corridor as Tozet Beryl squeezed past. The Listel held up three rather-more-modern Union ration boxes. <It seems that it is eating-time!> She gave one to Spiral and one to Talon, before leaning back into the corner opposite the door as it closed.

Three loroi and one human tore open their respective foods, Talon discovering that she was rather hungrier than she had expected. It seemed that first wrestling with hardtroops and then shattering the basis of everything the loroi had thought they’d known about their ancestors built up an appetite!

She was halfway through her first pozet when she paused mid-swallow as a thought struck her. From the echo of her sending, Spiral had made the same realization.

Tozet Beryl sent <It seems that you two really do see him as a warrior, to be so comfortable eating in his presence.> as she only now began to unwrap her own meal.

Talon swallowed the bite of misesa-grain bun before answering, the better to keep her sub-channels clear of just how good the steaming-hot spiced miros-meat inside the bun tasted after the day she’d had. <Well, of course. He’s a pilot, like us. It does help that he eats like a warrior.>

She indicated the human in question as he poked a straw into his ration packet and stirred it around. A few moments later, he took a brief pull on it, swallowed, and sighed. “[Why is it always stroganoff? I swear they switch around the color codes every time I figure them out...]”

<Fascinating.> Beryl sent. <It seems to be a completely liquid-based meal. Maybe human biology is adapted for that? But no, their teeth appear similar enough to ours that they must have evolved to consume harder foods.>

<Don’t forget your pozet, Listel.> reminded Talon. Best not let one of the team’s senior officers forget to eat. Even if her endless curiosity was rather charming.

While the three of them discussed, Alex continued eating.

<See?> Talon sent to the listel. <He eats with speed and efficiency, not slowly and distractedly like a civilian.>

<Nor does he play with his food.> added Spiral.

Both other loroi looked at her. <’Play with his food?’> asked Beryl.

<Like civilians do! They throw it at each other and waste it, much of the time!>

<Narrat, you think of young children. Not civilians.>

<Oh. Is there a difference?> Spiral asked innocently, almost managed to keep her sanzai appearing serious.

Almost.

They shared a brief burst of amusement. Talon finished her pozet and leaned back in her chair, basking in the comforting warmth of a full belly.

Spiral nearly managed to keep her thought of <That’s not the only way to get a ‘comforting warmth’ deep in your gut> contained in her own mind, but it slipped out just barely strong enough for Talon to receive.

Beryl too, as the two of them shared a bemused glance before looking over at Spiral. The Tozet sent <You really are from Maia, aren’t you?>

<Yes!> Spiral replied, grinning through her blush.

<You see what I have to deal with?> Talon sent in mock-suffering.

<The very incarnation of every Maiad stereotype in the entire Union?> replied Beryl, matching Talon’s mirthful side-channels.

<Thank you!> Beamed Spiral. <I do my best to represent my birth-world!>

Beryl took the last bite of her own pozet, and chewed slowly as her thoughts stirred just below the level of receivable sanzai. Once finished, she sent <You both are disciplined enough to keep things controlled while on duty.> Her side-channels made it clear that this was not a reproach but rather an honest observation, one that Talon appreciated.

<And when off-duty?> Spiral asked immediately.

<Once off-duty, it is up to you and Colonel Jardin.>

Talon frowned, but Spiral caught on quickly. <Alex is not a cloistered male, to have us ask his caretaker. He is a warrior.>

<He is one of the last ten members of his species.> sent Beryl. <He is absolutely under the care of his uncle.>

<Three of their ODSTs appear to be male, that's four in total. They will not mind if we borrow one.> sent Spiral.

<Humans do not work that way, as we have learned from some interesting conversations.> sent Beryl, her sanzai adding in just what she thought of the junior soroin who had wandered into those topics. Apparently Talon had been missing some of the fun, isolated up here in the cockpit.

<Then how do they work?> asked Talon, in genuine curiosity.

<As with their Colonel and Tempest, humans normally pair-bond. One female, one male.>

<She gets him all to herself?> exclaimed Spiral.

Talon only nodded. <It makes sense. Alex did say that human numbers of males and females are approximately equal.>

<Indeed so.> sent Beryl. <It would be disruptive to the cohesion of the ODSTs to introduce any loroi to their social environment.>

<’Social environment’?> Talon gave the listel a flat look. <They’re people, not herd animals in a zoo. I think they can figure things out themselves.>

The listel’s sub-verbal sanzai conveyed her grudging agreement.

Sensing her next argument, Talon added <And he is not in need of 'protection' from me! He is a warrior, as I said. He was born into a horrible war, just like each of us here. And he has fought in that war all his life.>

<And how long has that life been?> asked Beryl. Her side-channels ran thick with concern over how inexperienced the human might be.

Talon was quite sure that he wasn’t some child, but there was really only one way to find out.

“Alex, how many years do you have?” Talon asked.

Two sanzai messages hit her immediately: with disapproval from one, and amusement at her bluntness from the other. <What? I’m not a mizol.>

Beryl added <I was more interested in your saying ‘Alex.’ Humans seem to use shortened names as a mark of familiarity.>

<Do they?> Talon didn’t bother hiding her happiness at the thought. <He told me to, and said it was okay.>

“Hmm?” Alex looked over, setting down the empty food container. “How old am I?” He tapped a few commands into the console, and squinted at the display. “Uh, two-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand, three-hundred-and-eleven.” He grinned at Talon, the skin at the corners of his oddly-round eyes crinkling.

Her reproachful stare was apparently recognizable across species, because he added “Or ‘twenty,’ if that’s simpler.”

<So old!> sent Spiral, adding a mental image of an up-aged Alex, thin gray hair framing a face covered in well-worn lines much like his Uncle.

Talon matched her diral-sister’s amusement. <Almost as old as that teidar!> She sent her own image, of a stoop-backed teidar pallan with hair barely hinting at the bright-red it once boasted, using a cane to walk along one of Tempest’s corridors.

<Be careful.> sent Beryl, taking Talon’s image and modifying it to show the teidar breaking said cane over the head of a familiar blue-haired tenoin. <She has her own sense of humor, but you have to avoid becoming the punchline.>

The two tenoin took a moment to parse that. Then the three of them broke out into laughter. But just as they fought their mirth back under control, Talon happened to glance aside at Alex’s face.

His absolutely adorable look of confusion set first her and then the other two off again.

“I didn’t think it was that funny.” he said, chuckling softly and shaking his head.

“It most certain was!” replied Talon, adding in sanzai <See? Not a child.>

<You are right.> Agreed Beryl. <And certainly the other humans would have been more protective of him if twenty had been considered young for their species.>

Spiral sent <Yes: they would not have left him alone in the cockpit with two tenoin!> Her side-channels listed the many things that could happen to a male under such circumstances… none of which he would mind, of course.

<Or maybe they would have.> Beryl mused. <They are evidently well-used to working with loroi, and he and his own uncle are clearly with living alongside loroi. They may not have any objections, if he has not already been claimed by one of the other females.>

“Huh. Well, I’m glad to, uh, help.” The human in question, unaware of the flurry of discussion centered on him, said as he stood from his seat. “I’ll go see how the surgery’s going. Remember,” He leaned over Talon, pointing at some of the controls mirrored at her station. “alerts show up here, the override is here, and—”

Talon beat him to the last one. “And the emergency drop control is here. I was following your explanations most closely!”

He beamed at her and clapped one hand on her shoulder. “Good learning, co-pilot.” He disappeared out of the door with a last “Shout if you need me.”

<A good warrior.> Spiral sent, approvingly. <Checks that his replacement knows her task before leaving his station for even a brief period.>

<That is really one of the most simple duties of a warrior, though.> Beryl pointed out.

<It is still worthy of praise. Not all warriors remember their duties at all times.> Talon sent.

<I thought both of you had been assigned to Strikeforce-51 as soon as you completed your dirals?> asked Beryl, sanzai conveying her certainty that no warrior in that elite group could have forgotten any of her important duties.

<Yes. But our instructors at the tenoin academy shared with us many tales as part of their lessons. Some were examples where the instructor had been put in danger because of a failure of their superior, and some of the instructors relayed examples where their failure put their subordinates into danger.> Talon sent.

Spiral added <Such examples are a major part of training for tenoin. Is it not so for listel?>

<Not so much.> Beryl sent. <Listel training is more aimed at honing one’s ability to commit events to memory without missing details, and recalling that memory in full detail later. Also survival training on Mezan’s surface, to ensure that a listel is more likely to survive a situation into which she has been thrown.>

<Mezan.> Talon made a face. <That planet sounds awful. Too hot or too cold depending on the time, and always too dry.>

<Tabenid.> Beryl shook her head with a faint smile. <It is truly not so bad: expeditions to the surface are for survival training; they are not supposed to be comfortable.> Her sanzai became flooded with joy at remembered experiences. <And the Soia ruins that lie underground! They are extensive! Well-documented by now, yes, but every few years there is another discovery: of a small bunker, or a hidden alcove, or an overlooked cabinet, or so many other things. There is always something new that lies just waiting to be learned!>

<That is always exciting.> agreed Talon. <I grew up on Taben; our people have long dove for the Soia artifacts and ruins on the seafloor there.> She looked out at slipspace, mind wandering. <I do wonder if they are properly called ‘Soia’ artifacts, now. Our ancestors must have come to Taben — and Deinar and Perrein — as free Loroi, not on behalf of the Soia.>

<That is… not for certain.> disagreed Beryl, slowly. <Colonel Jardin’s explanations to Stillstorm and Tempo have mentioned that not all ‘warrior-forms’ in the Soia Empire rebelled. And that those who remained ‘loyal’ to the Soia were granted the same sanzai abilities, to make them better fighters against humanity… and their former arms-sisters. We have no way of knowing for sure exactly whose side our own ancestors were on.>

Talon whirled to stare at the Listel. <Truthfully?>

Beryl nodded.

<That is… most unsettling.> Talon sent, gaze lingering on Alex’s empty seat. Had her own personal ancestors fought against his? Against Alex, himself?

Did he know?

<It is, I think, actually more likely than not that our ancestors may be from the Soia-loyalist loroi.> Sent Beryl, radiating her own deep discomfort at the thought. <Colonel Jardin did mention that the ‘rebel’ loroi were attempting to flee known space while Tempest and he activated the Ring to cover their withdrawal. Why would those fleeing loroi settle on three worlds that seem to be so close to Soia space, given how fast the ships of their era could travel? And even if they did, — for whatever reason — what happened to the fleeing humans who were traveling alongside them? It seems more likely that Deinar, Perrein and Taben were populated by survivors of the Soia-aligned loroi.>

Talon sagged into her seat, the pozet bun which had been so satisfying earlier now sitting like a lead weight in her gut. First she had learned that the Soia had ‘built’ the loroi to be expendable footsoldiers — much as the Hierarchy built their hardtroops — never meant to have a voice in society. And now it had been pointed out that her own ancestors most likely stayed ‘loyal’ to such masters!

She looked at Alex’s seat once more. What would he think? <Do they know?> She asked Beryl. <The humans, here.> She managed to change it from ‘our humans’ at the last moment.

The listel looked back at her, one eyebrow raised. <I imagine that they have reached the same conclusions. But it has been a quarter-million years. I do not think they would hold it against us, any more than we would let it color our perception of them. It is, quite literally, ancient history.>

<To us.> Talon sent back. <To them? They were fighting against the Soia, against loyalist loroi — possibly against our very foremothers! — not even three days ago.>

<And yet they have been nothing but polite and helpful to us, thus far.> Beryl pointed out. <They even went into battle alongside us, with no signs of friction.>

<But,> interjected Spiral with her own question, <if it was loyalists who settled onto the Sister Worlds, why did they keep telling the Legend of Tempest at all? The story portrays her as a vengeful and bloodthirsty warrior, yes, but one who had cause to be that way. Wouldn’t these loyalists have just not kept the story in memory at all? Why honor an ancient enemy who destroyed your entire civilization?>

Talon and Beryl exchanged a look. That was a good point.

The three of them were still trying to come up with an explanation, nobody’s thoughts having crystallized enough to break out into verbal sanzai when Alex re-entered the cockpit. “The docs say your wounded should be back up and kicking by tomorrow, probably not long after we rendezvous with your fleet.”

He climbed into his seat and glanced over at Talon with a lopsided smile “They might miss their spots, though — those cots are the closest anybody in the back’s got to a bed.”

<I could use a bed right now.> sent Spiral, sanzai remarkably focused solely on the comfort of sleeping in a proper position. Alone, even. She let out a small yawn — apparently, her brief nap earlier had not been quite enough.

Alex turned at the sound. “The chairs recline all the way, you know.” He made to reach out, before stopping his hand and instead demonstrating on the controls of his own seat. Returning to an upright position, he said “Here, we’ve got almost an hour left until arrival. You two take some rack time; I’ll watch the dials.”

“That is uncommon kind of you, Alex.” Talon said, heart warming at his generosity. “But I think maybe it is more good to have two crew awake in the cockpit. Perhaps you can be sleeping while I and Spiral watch the ship?”

<Finally I would have a nice view!> Spiral sent, replaying her previous perspective looking down on Alex as his seat reclined almost all the way to reaching her.

<’Watch the ship,’ Narrat.> sent Talon with a smile. <Not ‘watch the human.’>

<I can do both at the same time!> replied her diral-sister. <Although the important displays are the two from your seats.> A burst of playful amusement. <Which means that I would have to— no! Better! I sit at your chair and watch the secondary screens; you sit on Jardin’s seat while he sleeps there and you watch the main screen!>

The accompanying mental image was rather suggestive, if one ignored that both parties still wore their armor. Well, Alex was dressed in more of a 'jumpsuit' than proper armor, but—

Talon shook her head in amusement at her wingwoman’s mostly-joking idea. <Do not memorize that particular image, toz—> Ah. The listel sat with her back against the wall, head leaned slightly into the corner, dozing away. <Well, it seems that one of us is ahead of schedule.>

“Nah.” Alex said, to Talon’s earlier point. “I’ve slept for a quarter-million years, I think I’m good for a while.”

He laughed, before lowering it to a quiet chuckle when Talon pointed to the sleeping Beryl.

<So much for that idea.> Spiral sent.

<It would never have worked.> Talon added. <For one thing, I do not think he would get much sleep with my armor pressing into him.>

She realized her error a solon before Spiral responded with a peal of sanzai laughter <I think he would be more distracted thinking what he might be pressing into you!>

Spiral clapped a hand over her mouth to keep her laughter from escaping into the audible range, reclining her seat down to horizontal.

<I sailed right into that one.> Talon acknowledged, amused despite herself. She knew that Spiral played up her enthusiastic endorsement of Maia’s ‘loose’ social standards more to get a rise out of Talon rather than out of any real support for them… but that was what Talon loved about her. What the whole diral had loved about their energetic Maiad comedian.

“Well, that’s, uh, Spiral going for it.” Alex said, head turning to look at the junior tenoin.

“Yes it is.” Talon agreed. “She will take a resting period next, and you and I will be remaining alert.”

<Clever.> Spiral sent, without objection. <Now you and Alex get to speak alone.> Her sanzai was swiftly fading into the hazy patterns of sleep. Apparently she really had needed the rest. <Speaking aloud sweet nothings to each other, that nobody else will ever hear...> This time, the faint image which accompanied the thought was more heartwarming than anything else, really.

Her diral-sister’s mind submerged completely into the depths of slumber. Talon watched her armor rise and fall rhythmically for several solon. Smiling warmly, she shook her head at the endless teasing from the junior tenoin. Spiral had seemed to take it as an insult to the whole diral when Talon had been denied the warrior-graduate’s usual encounter upon acceptance to the tenoin caste.

She’d never stopped teasing Talon over the years since, always planning how the rest of the diral were going to arrange their first rest period, sent home from the front lines. How they were going to ‘ensure’ that Talon made up for her missed opportunity — which had been Talon’s own fault, she was fully aware — to learn ‘What — and who — we’re fighting for!’

A rest period that the rest of the diral never got to see, in the end.

Sighing, she turned back to gaze out of the front window, at the featureless black plain of slipspace visible between the text and images of the display.

And conscious of Alex’s eyes on her.

“Are you all right?” He asked, softly. “I know it’s uh, been a tough day for you. For all of you.”

Now that Spiral was safely asleep, Talon could let herself agree that yes, he was kind. And considerate, and possibly even gentle. All things that males should be… but warriors not so much. Yet he clearly was a warrior, too — even in the short time that she had had to observe him, she felt confident in saying that as well. It was a remarkable contrast, to have such different characteristics in one person.

An intriguing contrast.

“I am well.” She replied, also quietly. “‘A good warrior can withstand the shocks of duty, both physical and mental.’” Quoted straight from the most basic training that any loroi went through, if she had the good fortune to not be born a civilian.

For several solon, the cockpit was filled only by the soft breathing of two sleeping loroi.

Eventually, Talon glanced over at Alex, meeting his level stare. Slowly, he nodded. “That’s all well and good while a warrior is still in combat, but nobody can hold all that stress in forever. The whole point of downtime for a warrior is to give them the chance to let it all out.”

A thought which few loroi were unacquainted with, yes, but she was still on duty. Not ‘in combat,’ yes, but there were still the pressures of being in such close proximity to these strange aliens who had upended so many things which all loroi had taken for granted.

That being said, there was a way for him to help her clear her mind of at least some of her worries. And no, it wasn’t any method that Spiral would have suggested.

“Where do you think have gone the loroi that fled with your own people after the War?” asked Talon. She was — proudly! — no mizol, but even she knew better than to directly ask what she wanted to most know.

Now it was Alex’s turn to let out a long breath, slumping into his seat and looking aside. “I don’t know. Never wanted to know. Wherever they were headed, Uncle Pierre and Tempest weren’t going to follow. And I wasn’t going to leave my family; there wasn’t anything for me on the evacuation arks.”

“Truth?” Talon asked, surprised. “No family members? No diral-siblings?” And wasn’t it a weird thought to picture males going through diral trials! Then one last question, more because Spiral would want to know than for any curiosity on Talon’s part. That’s what she told herself, anyways. “No long-term bonded mate?”

“Never had much close family. Mom and Dad died early; I ended up being raised by Uncle and Tempest — and the rest of the Furies — more than anyone else. ‘Gangs’?” He chuckled softly. “I guess there was the rest of my old squadron, but they went down with the ship when Punic was lost over Earth.”

Alex rolled his head over to look again at Talon, a wan smile on his lips. “No uh, ‘wife’ either.” The smile disappeared. “Wasn’t something that anybody was really looking for, towards the end. What was the point, with the Soia bearing down on us?”

Talon tried to imagine how she would feel, if the Hierarchy had been pushing ever-farther into Union space. If the war was obviously lost, with the end being only a matter of time. How would loroi — from the youngest soroin up to senior torrai like Stillstorm — handle it?

How would Talon handle such a situation?

“It seems that you must have had much familiarity with ‘stress.’” She said.

“Me and the rest of humanity.” said Alex. “’s why I tell you that people have to let it out at some point. Bottle it up, and you’ll explode at the worst moment.”

Well, if he insisted. “Then, where did we loroi come from?” She asked bluntly. “Us loroi, I mean. On Taben, and Deinar and Perrein.” She was glad that he couldn’t pick up her sanzai side-channels, as choked with worry and shame as they were.

“Ah.” he replied. “We wondered when that realization was going to kick in.”

So they did know.

Alex continued, “I could say that one of the Legions might have turned around. Maybe they decided they’d rather seek a more immediate revenge, or maybe they thought we’d need a hand stalling the Empire. Hell, maybe they came looking for us, for Tempest.”

He sighed, leaning forwards and tapping a quick command into his console. The display, visible to them both, shifted to show a map of the local region of the galaxy.

But the part she actually recognized was only a small part, surrounded by vast swathes of marked regions.

“We haven’t quite compared star charts just yet, but from what I’ve picked up talking to a few of your people it looks like your worlds are around here.” He pointed to the map.

After a moment, Talon reached out and corrected him. It’s not like the approximate map of the Union was classified information. Well, not too classified.

“As I thought.” He gestured to the label which sprawled across a vast region of space, including as a small corner within its influence the entirety of what was today the Loroi Union.

Soia Empire.

“Not exactly their core worlds — God knows those were so distant that even ONI struggled to reach out and touch them — but far enough into the Empire that nobody would have ‘accidentally’ ended up there if they were trying to get away.”

He looked back at her, Talon unable to quite meet his eyes. “So to answer your real question, no, we’re pretty sure you are descended from the loroi that stayed with the Empire.”

“Your enemies.” Talon said.

“’My enemies’ all died almost three-hundred-thousand years ago.” Alex emphasized. “They have no influence on you, as far as we can see. Hell, your people didn’t even remember we ever existed!”

That was how the loroi viewed the humans, yes, but what about the reverse? “How recent were you in fighting, before going to your ‘stasis-sleep’?” asked Talon.

“We’d been on the Ring less than a day before the Council arrived.” Alex said. “Fought our way to the Control Room, and dug in there.”

“Even you as a pilot?” A tenoin would have happily joined the soroin in a ground battle — ‘Every warrior fights,’ after all — but would more likely have been assigned to stay with the ship they’d arrived on. Unless—

“Of course. It was a one-way trip, we all knew that.” Alex responded.

Just like how Talon had taken the dropship back after Tempest’s crew on the Ring, rather than flee with Strikeforce-51. Had made her choice to die alongside her last diral-sister.

“You knew that you were not to be coming back?” It was something that every warrior accepted may come up during her life: a mission from which it was known from the outset that she would not return. Sometimes a desperate gamble against impossible odds, sometimes a mission which simply must be accomplished no matter the cost in lives.

“What was there to come back to?” Alex said, echoing his earlier description of a life bereft of any social bonds outside of the small group he traveled with. “Eleven people wouldn’t be missed in the evacuation fleets, and there was always the risk of some remnant following us back to them.”

Even for Talon, born into a war that had raged for long before she was born, trying to put herself into his mental position was intimidating. To know that your entire people now numbered fewer than lived now on one of the smaller colonies of the Union, and that their only hope for survival rested on your sacrifice.

And then to wake a quarter-million years later, with no trace of that fleeing remnant… and only the daughters of your enemies left to greet you?

Speaking of which, she still had to know: “Where there other loroi on the Ring when you landed?”

“Soia loyalist ones, you mean?”

She nodded.

“Yes, there were.”

“Did you fight them?”

He looked away from her, but Talon could see the steel in his eyes. “Wasn’t much of a ‘fight,’ with Tempest there. Not near the Control Center, at least. Once she teleported herself to the ship and us to near the STO battery, though, it was hard fighting all the way in.”

“What happened to them? After the fighting?” Talon left the issue of just what ‘teleport’ meant for Beryl to explore, later.

Alex looked over at her. “I couldn’t say. We left the dead lying in the forest outside the bunker, didn’t have time for a burial detail.” He glanced aside, eyes hard. “Not sure we’d have done so, even if we’d had the time. They’d made their choice.”

Talon breathed “Our ancestors.”

She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken aloud until Alex snorted quietly. “Those ones didn’t get the chance to be anyone’s ancestors.”

But there was no way to know for certain, was there? She did not know how the Soia Empire handled its warrior population, but if it was at all like how the Union did it was easily possible that the ancient loroi who fell under those powerful bright-blue energy beams of the ODSTs had already had daughters elsewhere.

Daughters who eventually came to land on Deinar? Or Perrein?

Or Taben?

For all of her life — and so many generations before her — the loroi of the Union respected their ancestors. Those ancestors were the Soia, after all, they who strode through space aboard warships whose power and majesty were beyond reproach!

And now that image of the past was gone.

Dead, burned away to nothing.

“Hey.”

Talon looked over, at Alex’s single word. The human held out a hand across the console towards her, carefully threaded between the control inputs to sit palm up. “They weren’t you. ‘New era, new loroi,’ right?”

His strange words were pushed to the back of her mind by the open gesture of his hand. Did that mean the same thing among humans as among loroi?

But no, of course it couldn’t. They were mind-blind, unable to truly see into each other no matter how much contact they shared. But it was still a friendly gesture, one between friends, yes?

She grasped his hand in hers.

His hand was larger than hers, the warmth surrounding her pleasant even in the near-stuffy air of the crowded vessel’s cockpit.

With a smile, Alex dropped his lotai.

At the forefront of his mind, glowing like a flame, was his satisfaction at the destruction of the Soia Empire having been so complete that even its own descendants knew so little about it. A warrior’s pride in a foe utterly demolished.

Intertwining with that, his sorrow at the extinction of his people in general and the deaths of so many of his friends in particular. To Talon’s surprise, among the faces which flashed through his memories in less than a solon she counted at least two loroi.

Lastly, his thoughts came to the loroi which had found his team on the Ring. On his surprise at first seeing them, confusion at their primitive weaponry and armor compared to the loroi alongside whom he had fought. His bewilderment and shock at the revelation of just how much time had passed.

Then how he had been jolted from his half-dazed marching out of the bunker with the rest of the column when a pair of tenoin came to speak with him, faint echoes of the camaraderie he had once felt with other pilots of his own era. Energetic and outgoing Spiral — whose vocal speech patterns seemed especially amusing to him; Talon would have to tease her diral-sister about that later — joined soon by ever-curious Beryl, whose boundless curiosity seemed to have struck a chord with him.

And finally, he pushed to the fore his thoughts of Talon. Her friendly discussion with him, framed in his mind with mild amusement and happiness at meeting such alien pilots. Her calm and steady flying of the dropship, and then her questions while he flew the prowler. His memories still marveled at how she had so quickly taken to plotting the jump when the Ring had opened its slipspace tear, and relaxed at her friendly conversation with him as a peer.

Culminating in a bubble of his subconscious noting just how cool and soft her hand felt in his.

Talon contained a mental groan. Not him, too! Just because tenoin spent their days training for flight operations rather than hefting blasters, or practicing martial arts, or swinging a hammer, didn’t mean that— oh.

He liked that softness.

“I—” her spoken words stumbled over each other, piling up before they made it all the way out. What did one say to someone who chose to open their thoughts that way to you, when they had no ability to peer into her own mind in an equal exchange? “I thank you. For what you have shown to me in this.”

And it was true, it did help put some of her fears to rest. Alex’s mind, at least, saw no comparison between the loroi around him now and those loyal to the Soia whom he had fought, in memories so recent to his mind.

“Of course.” He replied. Alien as his mind was, Talon had no problem recognizing the bubble of warmth that rose to the front of his mind. Tinged with… affection? “And—”

An alarm blared on the console.

[Urist]

I maintain that, in Outsider canon, Talon is best girl. Beryl is adorable, yes, but she's often somewhat patronizing ('matronizing'?) towards Alex. Fireblade is hard to read given that she doesn't talk, and that her job as security chief literally *requires* her to be distant towards him.

But Talon seems to view him as an equal. I figure that that would be even more so in this AU, where Alex is *also* a veteran small-craft pilot despite his youth, who's had every other member of his squadron and friend-group shot down in the war and now serves alongside the sole remaining family-analog he has left.

[Tamri]

Excellent as always. Personally, I find the description of the world at least as interesting to watch as the action.

As for what it looks like to drive a car while lighting your way with a flashlight, it’s funny, but I had such a case. I am a mechanic-driver of an M113, and before one of the redeployments, our headlights stopped turning on due to a nearby explosion. It is clear that somewhere, due to vibration, either on the switch or on the headlights themselves, a contact fell off, but this happened literally on the last trip, and we did not have time to fix the lighting. We didn’t have NVGs at that time.

So we had to drive almost forty kilometers to the railway station according to the principle “one steers, the other shines a flashlight.”

[EdwardSteed]

I just want to say that I'm enjoying this story.

[Urist]

Excellent as always. Personally, I find the description of the world at least as interesting to watch as the action.

As for what it looks like to drive a car while lighting your way with a flashlight, it’s funny, but I had such a case. I am a mechanic-driver of an M113, and before one of the redeployments, our headlights stopped turning on due to a nearby explosion. It is clear that somewhere, due to vibration, either on the switch or on the headlights themselves, a contact fell off, but this happened literally on the last trip, and we did not have time to fix the lighting. We didn’t have NVGs at that time.

So we had to drive almost forty kilometers to the railway station according to the principle “one steers, the other shines a flashlight.”

Heh. Yeah, the best (IMO) science-fiction is like that: the setting/worldbuilding is more interesting than the actual action going on. It's what separates a "Science-fiction" story from an "Action" story. (Compare, say, Star Wars versus any Tom Clancy novel/series). And Outsider is no exception: if one just looks at the 'action,' it's just "survivor of a ship's destruction gets rescued by a foreign military currently engaged in hostilities against another foreign military." Not too exciting.

The reason we're all here is because the *setting* that Arioch has made is so much fun to learn about and explore; Alex getting bounced around from one dramatic action scene to another is just the vehicle for exploring the world. I strongly doubt that there is anyone here (especially among those dedicated enough to create forum accounts) who wishes that Arioch had skipped all the "Talon/Beryl/Tempo/Fireblade explain what their upbringing and homeworlds are like" scenes in favor of more "Starships shoot blasters at each other and explode" scenes.

Anyways, that story with the M113 sounds like quite the experience! At least you and the other guy aboard got a great story out of it!

[Snoofman]

...The reason we're all here is because the *setting* that Arioch has made is so much fun to learn about and explore; Alex getting bounced around from one dramatic action scene to another is just the vehicle for exploring the world. I strongly doubt that there is anyone here (especially among those dedicated enough to create forum accounts) who wishes that Arioch had skipped all the "Talon/Beryl/Tempo/Fireblade explain what their upbringing and homeworlds are like" scenes in favor of more "Starships shoot blasters at each other and explode" scenes...

On that last note, blasting, shooting and explosions is good entertainment for perhaps the eager, prepubescent enthusiasts or people who prefer simple adventure over more complex nuances. Outsider so far has made a unique blend of intelligent dialogue until an unexpected event hurtles our heroes into action. I also appreciate now as an adult that Arioch didn't just make the action with some fake ninja moves but employs some military tactics and maneuvering that seem believable if not realistic.

Also like how you ended that chapter as a cliffhanger. Kind of reminds me of the end of Outsider's Chapter 2.

[Urist]

Also like how you ended that chapter as a cliffhanger. Kind of reminds me of the end of Outsider's Chapter 2.

Hehehe, there's a cliffhanger much later in this story that's *really* more evocative of the Chapter 2 ending with the KTKh looming overhead suddenly...

But any more information would be a spoiler

[Tamri]

Anyways, that story with the M113 sounds like quite the experience! At least you and the other guy aboard got a great story out of it!

I would have been more pleased if this experience had been accompanied by a properly functioning repair and supply services, and NOT included a shrapnel in my shoulder, fortunately the shoulder pad saved my arm.
On the other hand, after a year and a half of service, I can drive off-road at night without any lights at all and without NVD at a speed of 25-28 mph, I can diagnose fifty-year-old scrap metal right in the field and use sticks and acorns to repair it so that it can run. And if you give me at least some kind of canopy, spare parts and tools, then I can repair everything in it, except for restoring the electronics, the transmission or engine itself. Although theoretically I know how this should be done...

[Urist]

“—t’s one of ours, all right.” Colonel Jardin confirmed, looking at the image which Tempo displayed on her datapad. The artificial lotai-machine that had been recovered from the Shell warship. Thought at the time to have been designed to be carried like a ‘backpack’ by loroi, but now obviously made by and for humans, instead. “But damn if I can think of how it came to be there. We didn’t bring any with us.”

Stillstorm glanced over at Tempo. <Mizol, did the interrogations of the captured Hierarchy troops specifically indicate the Ring as the source of that area-of-effect lotai-generator?>

<There was no mention of the Ring itself, no, but they were certain that the Device came from the same system as where we found the Ring. There were no further details on the Device itself, unfortunately; none of the enemy personnel who had worked closely with it survived the battle.>

Stillstorm snorted. <Or they committed suicide before capture.>

<That would have been wise of them. We were most fortunate that some of the other crew were more foolish.>

Tempo turned back to the human, the three of them pressed close in the tiny cabin. On a ship this size, even the Captain only merited enough room for a fold-out bed opposite his fold-out desk. The two loroi now sat on the bed while Colonel Jardin eyed them both from his position, seated on the table.

“You are certain, Colonel, that this device did not arrive on the Ring along with your vessel?” Tempo asked.

“Completely certain. Tempest hated the things, could feel their presence anywhere on the same planet even when they were deactivated. She’d have bundled it out the airlock, followed by whoever had brought the thing aboard. It would have been completely unneeded, anyways — those were made to shield soldiers in the field, fighting against Soia ground troops." He tapped one finger against the side of his head, behind the ear "My team’s each got the full blocker built into their neural lace, so no need for the clunkier model.”

“I see.” said Tempo. She eyed Stillstorm again, thoughts blazing back and forth as to how this could have come to be. “Then it seems that a return to the Ring system will be necessary in order to continue the investigation.”

“I’ll say, if these aliens have found some UNSC wreck.” The human added. “How soon can that be done? As in, how much time will it take for this follow-up fleet of yours to catch up?”

Stillstorm answered. “Strikeforce-51 will have made their rendezvous with the Tinza fleet under Duskcrown already.” That would require Mazeit Moonglow to have pushed her formation’s engines to the limit. But after all the time that Stillstorm had spent grooming the younger torrai for command, she knew that Moonglow would have made exactly that decision. “Duskcrown’s warships are slower than those of the Strikeforce, but they will sail into the Ring’s system within four days of our reaching them.”

“And will they be enough to push these 'Shells' out of the system? Or are we going to be searching around for whatever source they pulled that psi-blocker from while dodging patrols?”

A sector fleet, freshly reinforced from their heavy losses during the Enemy’s last offensive, now out for revenge? And commanded by the ‘Topar of Tinza Sector’ herself?

Stillstorm laughed darkly. “The Shells should as—”

A sudden burst of sanzai concern radiated outward from the cockpit.

Stillstorm halted her vocal speech and immediately sent <Pilot. What is the situation?>

<Uncertain, Lashret. The slipspace thread that we have been traveling along ‘terminates early’ before it connects back to realspace. Ensign Jardin says that it’s not something he’s seen before. He says that he can attempt a forced transition back to realspace, but that this move is risky.>

A speaker overhead in the cabin crackled “Sir? You’ll want to see this.”

“On our way.” replied the Colonel as he stood.

<Has your brief introduction to this ‘slipspace’ given you any grounds to guess how risky such a maneuver may be?> Stillstorm needed to know.

<Negative, Lashret. But if it is similar to our first jump to slipspace...> the pilot’s sanzai trailed off as her attention focused elsewhere. Then <I have an idea. I will discuss it with Ensign Jardin.>

<Do so.> Stillstorm sent, as the three of them left the cabin. <Our time until we would have arrived in the system as previously planned?>

<Two-hundred solon, Lashret.> Answered the tenoin distractedly, her side-channels full of thoughts whose significance Stillstorm couldn’t follow. She’d have the listel explain the mechanics of slipspace to her later — the alien FTL technology was clearly worth knowing more about, herself.

The three of them filed past the medical cots, Tempo exchanging a smile with the now-awake paset — admittedly a rather pained smile, on the latter’s part — whose regenerating blaster-injuries Desire was looking over.

It was still amazing to Stillstorm — the crash on the Ring, two close-quarters fights against the Enemy, their hasty evacuation — fighting remnants of the Soia Empire itself! — and still no fatalities since the destruction of Tempest.

Truly, dalid was a tapestry woven by a blind and senile seamstress. No rhyme or reason to it all.

On the other hand, as Stillstorm stepped into the crowded cockpit and felt the waves of worry pouring off the two tenoin, there was that old saying about not counting one’s fish before they were caught…

“What is it.” Colonel Jardin’s statement was more of an order than a question.

“The slipspace filament, it just… ends short of the system’s gravity well.” his nephew pointed to the screen in front of him. “We’d have to make a crash translation once ‘over’ the well, and hope the drive core could stand the shear when we slam straight into the transition barrier head-on.”

“Any reason not to push ourselves down now?” the older human asked.

“At this angle? We’d bounce off the transition barrier.” The Ensign waved one hand, mimicking a thrown stone bouncing across the surface of a pond. “’Doink.’”

“And if we do nothing? We’d whiff past the system?”

“No, sir. The filament ends right here; if we run out to the end of it, we’re going to get shunted hard onto the nearest continuing thread. Unless it just happens to be almost exactly colinear, the shear would tear the core right out through the hull.”

Stillstorm looked to where the group’s listel bent low over the lead tenoin, ideas flashing back and forth between them rapidly as they examined the sensor readings. <This makes sense to you?>

The listel’s subconscious sent back its affirmation. She flipped the display to another setting, overlapping two images.

<Yes!> Crowed the tenoin arrir, one hand pointing to the display even as her left hand tapped out calculations on the controls. “Alex! Dive onto the gravity well at this angle!” She ordered aloud.

Stillstorm noted that the young human began adding his own inputs to the controls even before responding. The tenoin had made more progress than Stillstorm had expected. “On it. Spot something familiar in the readings again?”

It was the listel who answered him. “Yes. Arrir Talon has plotted the entry vector that would lead to this system, if we had jumped from the nearest star. That approach angle is known to be usable for system arrivals.”

“[Damn shame it doesn’t show up on the sensors, then.]” muttered the human pilot in his own language.

“[You think she’s wrong?]” said the Colonel, apparently a question by its tone.

“[Doubt it. She seems to know what she’s doing. And the slipspace filaments around here are all fucked up, now; maybe our sensors just aren’t dealing with it well.]” In Trade, Ensign Jardin continued “Diving on the transition now. Thirty solon until we hit the boundary.”

<Listel, you are certain about this entry vector?> Stillstorm asked.

<Affirmative, Lashret.> the white-haired loroi answered immediately and truthfully. <When we passed uneventfully through this system aboard Tempest earlier, Listel Tozet Antimony and I took the opportunity to update the Fleet’s jump maps of the area with what data could be gathered during system transit.>

Stillstorm nodded at that. That was not standard practice in the Fleet at large, but it did show the sort of initiative that she trained into the officers of her Strikeforce. And to ensure that they kept doing so… <Well done.>

A timely compliment could be among a leader’s greatest tools. The trick was ensuring that one only ever delivered them when one’s subordinates truly deserved such praise.

“Twenty solon!” announced the Ensign.

<It will be a deep jump, Lashret.> sent the listel. <There is a gas giant in the system that will be near our arrival zone, but we should be able to skirt its gravitational effects. However, we may emerge very close to the combined fleet’s position.>

The Emperor’s Chain answered before Stillstorm could. <Then it is perhaps better that I send a radio message first.> She turned to the Lashret, her sanzai radiating amusement. In a private sending, Tempo added <If Tazites Duskcrown hears your voice first, we might find ourselves on the receiving end of a ‘mistaken weapons discharge’!>

In sanzai tightly aimed to the mizol and only the mizol, Stillstorm sent <You are not quite so amusing as you think you are, Parat.>

Not that the mizol was entirely wrong about Duskcrown. The one — and only — redeeming feature of the Tinza Sector Governor was that her boundless hatred for the Shells and their accomplices matched even Stillstorm’s.

Well, almost.

Other than that, the Tazites was a conniving, two-faced, verbalizing example of just what sort of ‘officers’ had been promoted in the wake of Greywind’s ill-advised usurpation of the throne.

“Ten solon! And— [Shit!]” the Ensign dipped into his native language, hammering at the controls. “Planetary well! Gas giant, and a big one!”

<It appears that we are not clear of its effects.> Observed Stillstorm, letting a trace of disapproval leak through her sanzai. She expected better of her bridge officers.

<But that makes no sense!> sent the listel, peering closely at the screen. <Our vector remains well clear of it! More than three light-solon even at the closest approach!>

<Still,> added the lead tenoin, <we’re sliding into its gravitational well. Either the range readings are wrong, or human vessels are more vulnerable to gravitational distortion than our own faster-than-light drives are.>

“This’ll be close!” said the human pilot, as the ship shuddered briefly underfoot.

A heartbeat later, and the black nothingness of slipspace was replaced by glaring stars.

And one very large gas giant looming rapidly up below them, occluding almost the entire view.

“Dumping full power to engines!” said Ensign Jardin, the ship rumbling around them. “We’re pulling clear, but the gas is fusing in our wake — we’re lit up like a beacon here!”

A whooping alarm sounded, and the Colonel reached up to one of the overhead control panels to switch it off. “Radar warning. Search patterns — we’re being painted. Well within the burn-through range.”

He gestured to the sensor station off to one side, the one manned by a one-eyed tenoin. The sensor readings were still coming in, but even with the human craft unable to make anything of the received IFF codes Stillstorm could recognize the ship signatures of the Tinza fleet.

Right on top of them, two light-solon distant.

The Colonel turned to Stillstorm and Tempo. “Your people, I assume. Ready to speak to them?”

Tempo nodded, and glanced at Stillstorm out of the corner of her eye. The Lashret stepped aside and let the mizol enter fully into the cockpit. After all, perhaps it was nice not to have to speak to Duskcrown herself, at least not initially. Although as mission commander, Stillstorm knew she was the one who would make the overall report on their… strange experiences and findings.

Even if she had been reporting to a torrai more conventional than Duskcrown, that conversation would be very ‘interesting.’

Colonel Jardin reached overhead and held his finger against one switch. “Hot mic, Parat.” He flipped the toggle.

“Tinza Sector Fleet, this is Mizol Parat Tempo. This vessel has been recovered from the Soia Ring structure located by Strikeforce-51 and is currently under Loroi control.” A lie, unsurprisingly, but at least a useful one. “We carry the surviving crew of Group Command Ship Tempest and will need to make our reports to Torrai Tazites Duskcrown and Mizol Torimor Shadow at the earliest opportunity.”

She paused, awaiting a response. Colonel Jardin toggled the mic off and glanced aside at the sensor station. “We’re still being tracked, but they haven’t switched to a targeting band just yet.”

“They won’t.” Stillstorm declared. For all her flaws, Tazites Duskcrown wasn’t stupid. And any crew aboard her sector fleet who had allowed the monotony of back-line garrison duty to dull their minds — while the Raider fleets did the real fighting — would have been weeded out during the bloody running battles against the earlier Shell offensive.

A voice answered over the radio, and Stillstorm’s brow rose. Apparently, Mizol Torimor Shadow herself had been on the bridge, or very close to it. Fortunate. “Your message is received, Parat. Is your vessel capable of safely transferring able-bodied personnel, or do you require assistance in docking guidance?”

Stillstorm frowned at the strange wording, before her eyes shot to Tempo. As Colonel Jardin acknowledged her brief nod by toggling the switch again, she said “Affirmative, Torimor Shadow, we are. This vessel does not possess a docking system matching Union standards. However, no docking guidance will be required.”

More irregular word usage. Stillstorm’s eyes narrowed as she caught on. <Mizol code-phrases.> she confirmed in a private sending to the political officer. One corner of her lip curled into a sneer.

<Simply informing the Tinza fleet that we are not under duress, and that we do not require a teidar boarding team.> came the reply.

Meanwhile, the tenoin pilot had been tapping her fingers against the back of her other hand, clearly deep in thought. She turned to look back over her shoulder. “I believe this vessel could maybe dock inside the main hangar bay of a Typhoon-class Assault Carrier. One is present in the formation ahead. Possible to fit maybe if the fighters and shuttles leave the hangar empty.”

That was an interesting idea.

The tenoin continued, “Would not be required then for all passengers here to disembark in vacuum suits and float to ship. It seems embarrassing for returning victorious warriors to be fished for by Tinza fleet.”

The young warrior did have a point.

And of course it would also let the experienced gallen aboard the carrier get a close look at the human vessel while it remained docked.

The two humans had likely reached the same conclusion. “[It’s not like they haven’t seen almost every inch of this ship from the inside already.]” Ensign Jardin said.

“[I’m still not leaving the keys with the valet.]” replied his uncle. “[We’ll keep the ramp closed when we can, and sentries out when we can’t.]” He switched to Trade. “Think you can pull off a maneuver like that?”

“Their carrier’s going to be doing the heavy lifting of a maneuver like that. We just float still in space and let them swallow us up. If they can get the hangar cleared, we can set her down on the landing gear safely enough.”

The Colonel turned to Stillstorm and Tempo. “Your call.”

Stillstorm and Tempo eyed each other, their sub-verbal sanzai flashing back and forth. For once, they were in agreement. Stillstorm spoke via the radio “Alert, Tinza fleet. This vessel contains valuable Soia artifacts which should not be risked on a spacewalk. My pilot notes that the primary docking bay of Assault Carrier Storm Surge should be capable of containing this vessel, if the hangar is cleared of fighters and support machinery first.”

She nodded to the Colonel, and he ended the transmission. With a raised eyebrow, he pointed with his thumb at Alex and asked “’Valuable Soia artifacts’?”

Stillstorm answered “Think of it as a final insult to your foe. First you destroy their Empire, and now you usurp their name.”

He snorted, one corner of his mouth quirking upwards. “I can work with that. The Soia were always particularly attached to their Names.”

The only downside was that the plan meant boarding a carrier rather than the fleet flagship, so Stillstorm wouldn’t get to feel Duskcrown’s reaction to Stillstorm being the one to return with the most significant archaeological — and diplomatic — find of the millennium.

Possibly of the entire spacefaring history of the Union.

The radio crackled. “Understood, recovered vessel. Tazites Duskcrown has approved your suggestion; carrier Storm Surge will be prepared to receive you within eight-hundred solon. Take station ahead of her, separation distance two-thousand mannal.”

Excellent.

The voice wasn’t done. “Tazites Duskcrown is departing on a shuttle and will meet you aboard Storm Surge upon your disembarkation.”

Even better. “Acknowledged, Tinza fleet.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

<Ready to lower the ramp.> Reported the soroin standing next to the controls at the back of the cargo compartment. Suppressed excitement glowed in her mind-signature.

<Do so.> Sent Stillstorm. The craft had settled onto its landing legs some time earlier, and Storm Surge’s hangar officer had relayed that the hangar had been sealed and pumped up to breathable pressure.

There came a brief hiss as the rear-facing ramp began to descend, air flowing out of the craft into the cavernous hangar beyond.

Stillstorm and Tempo were the first out of the ship, wheeling to one side as they stepped off of the dark-gray metal that the UNSC seemed to prefer and onto the familiar gray-white flooring of a loroi warship. Much better lighting out here, as well — did humans have better low-light vision than loroi, or was the prowler dimly-lit by their standards as well?

They were met by Torrai Tazites Duskcrown and Mizol Torimor Shadow, each now taking off the oxygen mask that had let them safely enter the hangar while it was still under-pressurized. Stillstorm and Tempo each sent their acknowledgments to their respective seniors.

<Tazites Duskcrown.> Stillstorm drew herself upright, looking down on the shorter torrai. At her back, the rhythmic clanging of soroin boots rang against metal as the troops marched out of the crowded prowler. The girls were doing their best to keep their thoughts private — clearly looking forward to springing the surprise on the crew of Storm Surge just as Stillstorm anticipated shocking Duskcrown — but enough leaked through for the two senior officers in front of Stillstorm to eye her suspiciously.

<Lashret Stillstorm. Your surviving the destruction of Tempest is to be expected at this point, but your method of rejoining the fleet… This craft was found on the Soia Ring?> Duskcrown asked, eyes raking over the prowler.

This would have been much easier if Stillstorm could have kept to spoken words, but that would be pushing the limits of what respect must be shown to a senior officer. Especially one as ‘prickly’ as Duskcrown. <Affirmative, Tazites. The ancient vessel was recovered from a Soia-made storage facility...> at her side, Tempo looked back over her shoulder and then flashed a brief signal to Stillstorm, <… as was its crew.>

For a moment, Duskcrown and Shadow only deepened their frowns. But then they glanced past her, their eyes widening at the sight of the people who followed the last soroin down the ramp.

“[Bit small for a ‘carrier,’ sir, but at least there’s room to stretch out.]” said one of the ODSTs.

“[Enjoy it while you can, we’ll be turning around as soon as practical. Should be just us and maybe a few observers aboard the Plummet, though.]” Colonel Jardin said to his soldiers as he marched over, helmet tucked under one arm. With a nod to Duskcrown, he spoke in his accented Trade “Greetings. I am Colonel Pierre Jardin of the United Nations Space Command. My species is called ‘Human,’ but I understand that that means nothing to you for now.”

Duskcrown eyed the alien from head to toe. Then she sent privately, with a spark in her eye <Lashret Stillstorm, I see now that I must have mocked you too harshly, earlier, for taking Tempest through too many battles without so much as scratched paint. To think that you then took Tempest’s loss so strongly as to seek out an alien male…!>

Evidently, the Tazites had recovered from her shock faster than Stillstorm had expected, to return to her normal crude humor so quickly. Stillstorm eyed the light-orange braid which wrapped around the senior Torrai’s right shoulder to hang to her hip.

<If you are so eager to have your hair shortened again, Tazites, my blade remains at ready.> Stillstorm let her left hand fall to rest just above the pommel at her side. It had tasted victory in a real fight earlier aboard the Soia dreadstar; a formal duel would be a step down after that.

Duskcrown smiled infuriatingly back at her. <That will have to wait for later. For now, there are even greater foes to fight, once the fleet reaches the system which the Shells chased you out of.>

Off to the side, the two mizol shared a quick glance and flurry of sanzai too focused to be overheard. Then Shadow sent <Your Torrai Mazeit Moonglow has provided us with the sensor logs of your successful scouting mission to this Ring’s system. The information contained there will be invaluable for planning our attack.> She looked between Stillstorm and Colonel Jardin <But I suspect that there is quite a great deal more information to review, now.>

Aloud, the mizol said “It seems that there is much to discuss, Colonel. I am Mizol Torimor Shadow, and beside me stands Torrai Tazites Duskcrown, governor of the Tinza sector and commander of this fleet. Would you be amenable to moving our discussion to a briefing room?”

A good idea – the gallen and tenoin hangar-crew that filed into the open bay were piling up around the entrance, eyes wide as they goggled at the human vessel and the aliens standing in front of it. Stillstorm’s own people showed much better discipline — as expected from those who merited posts in an elite formation such as Strikeforce-51 — and maintained their ranked formation off to one side, awaiting review.

Shadow glanced aside at Stillstorm. <Torrai Mazeit Halfspear has arranged for berthing aboard her vessel for your crew until they can be shuttled back over to Strikeforce-51. More immediately, she has offered the use of her ship’s primary tenoin strike-briefing compartment for our discussion.>

“That is acceptable.” Colonel Jardin said. “My people will remain here to guard the ship while I accompany you.”

Apparently, by himself. Did the UNSC expect their commanders to handle command and negotiations both, or was it a case of trusting their officers enough not to need political minders?

Stillstorm squelched the unexpected flare of envy for someone who wasn’t even loroi, and turned aside to her warriors. <The mission is formally at completion. Consider yourselves on rest-time until further notice. Dismissed!>

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Fireblade did not follow the elated soroin completely out of the hangar, but rather stayed nearer the human ship and stepped to the side, taking up a sentry’s position. There should be someone guarding the alien craft from curious loroi onlookers, and it was best for that someone to also be one who could answer the questions that she knew were coming rather than a soroin or teidar from Storm Surge’s own crew.

And sure enough…

<Are they really aliens?> asked a hangar-technician gallen bastobar, eyes glued to the ODSTs standing closer to their own vessel.

<Are they Soia?> asked a soroin peering over the gallen’s shoulder.

<They are not Soia.> Sent Fireblade, her side-channels emphasizing just how bad of an idea it would be to ask such a question of the humans directly. Although, <Furthermore, only two of them appear to speak Trade; one is presently in a private conference with the Tazites and the other remains aboard their ship.>

Her sub-channels leaked her displeasure at the idea of the three pilots going unsupervised in the small cockpit. Tenoin tended to be… ‘independent-minded’ compared to most warriors, and two so young that they had likely only ever seen a single male each before now spending so much time in close proximity to the alien pilot…

<They look like that under their armor?> sent the soroin. Apparently a few images had slipped out via Fireblade’s sanzai — she slammed her control down tightly onto her side-channels. Enough of that, then.

For one thing, her sub-verbal warning appeared to have had precisely the wrong effect. <That is correct.> she sent in a clipped message.

<I don’t know,> sent the gallen towards the soroin, <They’re kind-of tall for me, not sized like a male should be.>

Fireblade rolled her eyes. <They are, before all else, warriors. It was their actions and choices which allowed our group of survivors to fight our way free of the Shells and return here.> The one thing that was more laudable than killing Shells was keeping one’s fellow warriors alive, and these humans had done both.

<Huh. If you say so.> The gallen shrugged. <Do these alien ‘warriors’ of yours plan on doing all the maintenance work on their ship themselves? Rumors here say that that ship was real hard to spot on sensors once it stopped doing its best ‘comet’ impression in the gas giant, and I’d love to get a closer look at how they did it.>

<Unknown.> Fireblade sent. She reached out to try and ask the tenoin pilot aboard the Did Ever Plummet Sound, but took a moment to find her faint signature. Asleep. <Pilot!> She sent.

No answer. Deeply asleep, then.

<Wait here.> She sent to the gallen. Fireblade walked back to the prowler, nodding as she passed the ODSTs who sat on some of the cargo crates now piled outside of it.

“[Looks like Red’s headed back aboard. Mirez, you go with her and keep her out of trouble.]”

Boots clanged on the ramp behind her, Fireblade glancing back to see one of the female human warriors following her aboard. It was to be expected that they would have a guard follow her aboard their own vessel. The ‘captured’ Soia Engineers floated idly in the front of the main compartment, watched by another two humans. There was now much more room in the corridor with the medical cots stowed away, and Fireblade palmed open the cockpit door.

The first thing she saw was the junior tenoin narrat working at the sensor console off to one side, with the human pilot leaning low over her shoulder and pointing to something on the display. At Fireblade’s entry, he glanced up at her and held one finger vertically against his lips, jerking his head towards the seats at the front. In the right-side seat, reclined all the way down to horizontal, the tenoin arrir snored lightly.

Interestingly, a light-gray fabric blanket had been draped over her. One arm hung out from underneath, in the black-and-orange bodysuit of her caste. Her armor lay neatly set on the floor at her side.

From behind Fireblade, her ODST escort murmured “[Aww, kid, you got the blanket out for her? Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in your family, does it?]”

The human pilot smirked. “[And getting Tempest on our side turned a one-sided war into a mutual annihilation. Playing nice with the elves has worked out for us before, why not try it again?]”

“[Helps that they’re cute.]”

“[You’re not wrong.]” The pilot’s gaze lingered on the slumbering tenoin for a few solon. “[Better keep a short leash on Novik, then?]”

“[Hah, no. They’re not his type.]” With a soft creaking of fibers and metal plates, the ODST flexed one arm. “[Only one woman around here with enough muscle definition for his tastes.]”

The two humans shared a quiet chuckle. Fireblade wished that Beryl were here — the listel would have enjoyed observing the aliens interacting with each other, especially later once she had learned their language. But it was the listel’s duty to accompany Stillstorm and Tempo to the debriefing; after a mission like they’d had, having someone to fill in the details was especially valuable.

<Remaining aboard, narrat?> Asked Fireblade.

<Affirmative, pallan.> The teal-haired loroi gestured to the screen in front of her. <Pilot Alex has said that we are likely to return to the Ring system, and they will need a sensor officer then. So I am learning how to operate the sensor systems! It is amazing how much resolution these aliens have gotten out of such a compact array.>

<That is normally a job for a listel or soroin.> Fireblade observed.

The narrat radiated her dismissal of the idea via her sub-channels. <All of the soroin we have with us are infantry armswomen, and the soroin here aboard Storm Surge aren’t even from Fifty-One.>

Fireblade nodded in agreement at the obvious unsuitability of any personnel who had been passed down to a garrison fleet. <And you do not believe that our own tozet should perform the task instead?> She let something of her thoughts on the matter leak into her sub-channels.

<Of course she could!> sent the narrat defensively. <But she has so many other important tasks that take her attention, like recording the Lashret and their Colonel, or seeing how human food is packaged, or examining every square mannal of the ship with a fine-toothed comb!>

That certainly did sound like Beryl. But it was good to hear that the narrat was thinking along the same lines.

<Besides, when she wants to, there’s room for the four of us here in the cockpit!>

<And the fact that such crowding does push you closer to this ‘Alexander’ is, of course, merely a side-effect?>

<Well, it is according to instructions!> The narrat sent with a wink.

And using two tenoin like fishing-hooks to reel in the new-found aliens tighter into the influence of the Union still struck Fireblade as wrong. Even if the tenoin certainly seemed to enjoy it.

Perhaps especially if they seemed to enjoy it.

But back to her original meaning for re-boarding the prowler. <Narrat, the hangar technicians wonder if the human craft requires maintenance. Clarify that with your pilot friend.>

“Alex, is your ship needful of supplies or repairing?”

“Hmm? Oh, uh, no. We’ll want to compare notes with your engineers at some point to see about refueling, but Plummet’s got plenty left in the tank for now. As for supplies...” the human trailed off.

“Something more?”

“Well,” the human spoke slowly, apparently thinking-while-speaking in that strange, alien way. “Plummet’s pretty much toothless right now — we expended our anti-ship ordnance on the way in to the Ring. But the wing bays are open and available; it’s not like we’re going to use them for anything else.” He eyed the narrat. “Go ahead and ask your people if they think we could put together some sort of, uh, 'interface' between any of their strike ordnance and one of our bay assemblies. The Engineers will be very glad to help with something like that. Not exactly in ONI’s playbook, but I doubt Uncle’ll object now.”

Once Fireblade relayed the idea to the gallen waiting outside, the response was immediate.

<WHAT!?> The technician sent in flat disbelief. <Get two utterly incompatible weapons systems to work together, with the precision needed for anti-ship warfare? This isn’t like some soroin finding an alien hand grenade and finding out which button causes the ‘boom’; we’re talking a near-impossibility! It’s crazy, it will never work, it...> her sub-channels settled down. <... sounds like a fun project, actually. Can he show us his ship’s weapons bays immediately, without his captain’s presence?>

<Apparently so.> sent Fireblade. <From what the pilot has said, it appears that he considers much of the normal secrecy of his navy to be unnecessary given their current circumstances.> She wasn’t sure what she thought of that. On the one hand, making such decisions was not the responsibility of junior officers such as the Ensign. On the other hand, the alien did have a point about there not being much reason for it anymore.

She eyed the tenoin narrat, who spoke aloud “The hangar people of this ship are wishing to look into your weapons bays, if you will lead them to.”

“Now?” The human sounded surprised.

“Yes so!” The narrat said, before quieting her voice as the sleeping arrir stirred slightly. “I will see over sleeping Plunger, you go show gallen where to stick torpedoes!”

Ensign Jardin blinked at her, opening his mouth to say something. Then apparently thought better of it.

He stood and carefully leaned over the sleeping loroi, musing lowly to himself as he tapped a few commands into the console in front of her chair. Only with the vessel sitting idly on the hangar floor could Fireblade have felt the faint tremor underfoot. “[I think the maintenance guides should cover that, maybe run them through the...]”

The Ensign turned and nearly walked into Fireblade, prevented from physical contact only by a reflexive pulse of her powers.

“Oh, uh, excuse me.” He said, taking a step backwards to catch himself from falling.

After a few heartbeats of staring down the alien, Fireblade stepped back into the corridor to make room for him to pass. <Gallen, it seems that their pilot will exit the ship shortly and explain to you how to pursue your project. He speaks Trade quite fluently. If you have further questions, it is likely that one of the tenoin in the cockpit may answer them.> As long as the two tenoin had decided to throw themselves at the alien, they may as well help shoulder some of the workload of his ship.

As she left the vessel, Fireblade could hear behind her as her ODST escort chatted with the pilot. “[You know, most people would be a bit more freaked out at a Guard brain-pushing them like that.]”

“[No harm, no foul. Besides, even assuming that her strength is only a fraction of Tempest’s, that was closer to a polite nudge, if anything.]”

“[Well, you’re the one who spends the most time with them...]”

In the brief time Fireblade had spent inside the human ship docked in the hangar, the crowd of Storm Surge crew milling around the outer regions of the hangar had grown. It was hard to imagine that that many warriors truly had no duties to attend to right now, but she did suppose that the carrier’s hangar crew had little to do with all their fighters launched.

Behind the shifting wall of green, yellow and orange uniforms, a flash of golden-beige stood out. <Caste-sister, if your vessel’s crew truly have nothing better to do, please allow only a minimal number of them in to the hangar at one time.> Fireblade sent.

The ODSTs outside of the prowler didn’t seem ‘alarmed’ by the surrounding loroi; they leaned against cargo crates and chatted amongst themselves, hands not straying anywhere near the rifles slung behind them.

But Fireblade did notice that they were positioned in such a way that at least one of the aliens could see in any given direction.

<Why?> the other Teidar asked. <They’re just—> her sanzai cut off, side-channels reflecting her view of Fireblade glaring down at her from the prowler’s ramp. <I mean yes, of course Pallan!>

At the front of the crowd, a gallen forced her way forward, squeezing so closely between two soroin that she almost touched them. She sent <Here, I’ll get this.> The gallen, the same bastobar from earlier, took a few steps forward and pivoted on one heel to face the crowd.

In sanzai so forceful that the nearest loroi flinched back from her, the gallen sent <RIGHT! There’s an alien ship in my hangar, and you lot are getting in the way of my people looking after it! Anyone still here in my hangar in sixty solon without a valid maintenance task will answer to the Semago of Seren herself!>

She indicated Fireblade, who after a half-beat of hesitation pulled her shoulders back and flared her powers slightly, puffing her hair out to each side and glaring down at the crowd with faintly-glowing eyes.

That routine was normally saved for when some scuffle between recalcitrant newly-posted junior officers aboard Tempest got kicked upstairs to become her problem, but it had never yet failed to make the right impression.

And it didn’t fail now.

The crowd stilled, loroi flinching to duty-attention stance as several dozen pairs of eyes locked onto the intimidating teidar pallan. Slowly at first, and then quickly, they filed out of the hangar doors.

<Thank you.> sent the gallen to Fireblade. <I hope you don’t mind being used as the big stick to kick these girls out of their shock. They’re good crew, just thirsty for anything new. It’s been a… dull few years on garrison duty, endlessly orbiting Nezel.>

<Understandable.> Fireblade sent. <Boredom is among the most insidious foes faced by any warrior.> Admittedly not one that she had ever had much experience with. Life for any warrior of Strikeforce-51 was many things, but 'boring' was rarely one of them.

The gallen sent her agreement, turning towards the next group of loroi to enter the hangar, this time from one of the side-doors. This team of gallen were pushing a munitions-cart, piled with the measurement and diagnostic tools of their caste. That must be the crew that the bastobar would work with to see if they could convince Union munitions to work with UNSC weapons bays.

Fireblade stepped aside, eyes sweeping the now nearly-empty hangar. Much better.

She did notice that all of the ODSTs now had their helmets pointed towards her.

“[Private, tell me you caught that on video.]”

“[I absolutely did, sir. You ever see a display like that before?]”

“[I once knew a senior NCO that could clear a room that easy, but he was just that intimidating. Scuttlebutt says he ran with the, uh, ‘Section Three Giants’ back in his day, and I believe it.]”

One of the alien soldiers nodded to Fireblade. In very accented Trade, she said “Thank you.”

Fireblade inclined her head in response, before stepping away to take up a post watching the main hangar entrance. The rest of the warriors off of Tempest may be off enjoying some downtime, but for Fireblade, this was where she’d rather be. Someone had to ensure that the younger loroi from Storm Surge didn’t embarrass the Union, after all.

Besides, from here she could watch and listen to the strange, intriguing aliens work.

[Tamri]

“’Valuable Soia artifacts’?”

"Don't play a two hundred and fifty thousand year old fossil, BE a two hundred and fifty thousand year old fossil!"

[Snoofman]

The Loroi aboard Storm Surge must be ecstatic upon seeing males, even if they are alien.

Also liked the 'valet' bit.

Shadow: Welcome to Storm Surge.

Colonel Jardin: (reluctantly handing her the keys) Okay, you can park our cruiser. But NO joyriding!

Shadow: (grunts disappointedly) Mm.

[Urist]

The angle I'm taking (based on what I've read of Arioch's notes on loroi male-female interactions) is that most loroi warriors aren't *especially* focused on "ooh, males!". It's nowhere near the level of a ship full of human sailors seeing their first woman in months, at least. It's why I'm playing with the different loroi POVs: the younger ones "notice" more the humans that are male (looking at you, Spiral and Talon) while the more mature loroi largely ignore it.

And for the human dialogue, one of the things I always loved most about Halo (especially Halo 1/CE) is the 'voice' of the Marines (also Cortana). Not only is it amusing, but it's essentially a legacy of US mid-1990's humor/'dialect'. Since Outsider is from about that same era, I try to maintain that pattern of speaking for the human characters here, mostly when they speak in English (although Alex is essentially just as fluent in Trade as English, thanks to how he was raised).

[Urist]

<Talon. Talon!> A mind intruded into her dreams. <Wake up, Plunger!>

Talon blinked, arms grasping at the weight that was lying atop her. Was she still drea—?

She sat up, a blanket falling off of her to pool in her lap. Ah. <I’m awake.>

<Unhappily so, I see!> Spiral sent with a mental smirk.

Talon clamped down on her side-channels, flushing slightly. <What happened while I was asleep?>

<Well, you dreamed about—> Talon mentally swatted at her diral-sister, and Spiral broke off with a laugh. <Okay, okay!> The Maiad’s sub-channels sobered up. <You’ve been asleep for more than two cycles. We didn’t want to wake you; you looked too cute snoozing there!>

<A warrior is never ‘cu—> Talon turned to throw an indignant glare at her fellow tenoin.

<But a diral-sister can be!> interjected Spiral. She winked — or ‘blinked,’ with her one eye — and indicated the blanket still draped across Talon’s legs. <Besides, it was ‘cute’ for Alex to put that blanket on you. Very caring of him—> she added, knowingly, <—for a fellow warrior, of course!>

It was, at that. Of course, the blanket also explained why she felt so warm… certainly the fading threads of her dream could have nothing to do with it. Carefully keeping those images out of her side-channels, Talon sent <And what else happened?> She eyed the technical readouts that covered the displays both in front of Spiral and on the weapons console near Talon’s own position.

<Storm Surge’s hangar munitions personnel have been working with Alex to get torpedoes equipped on this ship.>

<Really?> Talon perked up. <Did they succeed?>

<They think it can be done. The gallen and those Soia ‘Engineers’ are fabricating the adapters now. They already made a quick adapter between this ship’s life support systems and Storm Surge’s resupply umbilicals. Which means fresh water and air.> Spiral responded.

She grinned at Talon. <And Alex just now left to take advantage of that water supply in the captain’s cabin shower. All alone, which must be really sad. Also inconvenient.> Spiral made a show of trying to reach around and rub her own back, between her shoulder blades. <I can’t imagine that he’s really able to get completely clean that way. So of course it falls to us to go help him!> Her teasing tone of thought from earlier returned. <As good fellow warriors, of course!>

For her part, Talon was mostly surprised that there was room for a bath on a ship this small. <Are you sure that there will be enough space for the three of us?>

<We can take turns.> Spiral sent back, standing from her seat and stretching. She ran her hands down her black-and-orange undersuit, smoothing out a few small wrinkles. <I do not think he will mind.>

Oh. Talon’s eyebrows rose as she caught some of the images flickering through Spiral’s side-channels. <Really? In a bath? Is that sanitary?>

Spiral shrugged. <You remember how my mother was present at our diral graduation ceremony?>

<Yes?> Talon let her sub-channels express her confusion at the non-sequitur. <She managed to miss her first cut at the short miros-fur that you called ‘hair’, as I recall.>

Spiral winced slightly, one hand rubbing at a long-since-disappeared cut on her forehead. <Somewhat too energetic, yes.>

<I could see the family resemblance.> Talon sent deadpan, as she stood from her seat and folded the blanket neatly on it.

Sticking out her tongue at Talon, Spiral continued with a gleam in her eye, <Well, she told me then that I had been conceived in a monastery bathing room!>

Talon gagged at the thought. <That seems… messy.>

<Then it is good that one is already in the right place to get cleaned up!> Spiral sent. <I tried it myself in the post-diral encounter.> She rested one hand on her lower abdomen, pouting. <It didn’t work. But there is always next time!>

<I don’t think it will work, with another species. Even as loroi-like as they look.> Talon sent, as she opened the cockpit door.

<And I don’t plan on going that far… today.> Spiral’s sub-channels conveyed her honesty. <I really do just want to help another warrior relax after a confusing few days.> She glanced aside, smile spreading on her face as they stepped out into the corridor. <And maybe see for myself just how loroi-like these alien males might be. But only looking, for now.>

The two tenoin paused, coming across Colonel Jardin standing outside the closed cabin door, leaning one shoulder against the bulkhead as he talked to their little expedition’s listel tozet. “—fectly capable of cleaning himself, although I suspect he will... appreciate your offer.”

Colonel Jardin turned to look over his shoulder at Talon and Spiral, their gazes flicking inquisitively from him to the cabin door. Talon spoke aloud “Colonel Jardin, Copilot Spiral and I were both wondering if Alex needed—”

“You too?” He closed his eyes and slowly shook his head, laughing softly to himself. “[Must be something in our side of the family, I swear.]” In Trade, he continued “Thank you, but as I was just explaining, showering is usually a private activity for humans when they can do so.” he nodded to each of the tenoin, a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth. “But I am sure that he will be glad to hear your ‘concern’.”

That was a pretty definitive statement, and from the person who was — Talon admitted — clearly in the position to act as Alex’s caretaker.

She shrugged. If the Colonel thought Alex wouldn’t be bothered by bathing alone, she wouldn’t argue with him. <Beryl, we’re going to go use the off-hangar baths. Some of the rest of the Tempest team are probably still in there. Want to join us?>

<Sure.> The three of them walked out of the prowler and across the open bay.

Behind them, they heard one of the ODSTs speak “[Any trouble, sir?]”

“[Just, ah, ‘keeping the showers clean.’]”

“[Kid’s made of Elf-catnip just like his Uncle, eh sir?]”

The three loroi exited the hangar, Colonel Jardin’s laughter echoing behind them.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

<So, anything non-secret that you can tell us about the torrai-club meeting?> Talon asked, closing her eyes and letting the warm water run down her face.

One of the nicest things about a full-size Assault Carrier was that the life-support systems were sized to both the ship’s crew and as many again ground-soldiers for planetary invasions. Even with the crew needed for serving as a fighter-carrier, that meant that the restrictions on hot-water use were rather looser than aboard most other warships.

<Did Stillstorm duel the Tazites again?> added Spiral, lying half-in the bath proper in the center of the compartment. <I heard the story about their first fight when I first boarded Tempest!>

<That was many years ago.> sent Beryl. The listel was sitting in her undersuit, running a towel and cleaning solution over her armored oversuit. <Well before I joined the Strikeforce.>

<But…?> Spiral sent, her sub-channels filled with so much curiosity that it was as if she were trying to pull the story out of the listel. <Did they fight again?>

<No.> Beryl corrected. <Not physically, at least. Although I received the impression that it was partly because Tazites Duskcrown was simply too shocked by the story of our expedition and our findings to irritate Stillstorm as I have seen memories of her doing before.>

<That, I can imagine.> Talon sent. She left the shower and took station next to Beryl, readying her own tenoin-orange flight armor.

There hadn’t been time to clean it out earlier when returning from her fighter sortie and immediately arguing her way into the pilot’s seat of the dropship sent after Spiral’s downed shuttle. As a result some of the liquid breathing medium was still crusted around the interior of the seals where it had dried in place, and that horrible stuff was always a chore to scrub out.

Frankly, it was probably for the better that she hadn’t joined Alex; this sort of elbow-work went better with room to spread out. Talon continued, <I can still hardly believe it myself.>

<Likewise for me.> Beryl sent. <The historical archivists back home are going to go mad when they realize how much of our history will have to be re-examined!>

<I can’t imagine they’ll be too upset.> added Spiral. <It will give all those listel plenty of opportunities to go ‘discuss’ old legends with their male counterparts!>

Beryl smiled. <There’s always a silver crest to every wave, yes.>

Talon scrubbed hard at the caked-on breathing medium. The stuff was unpleasant enough when she had to let it invade her lungs; couldn’t it at least be simple to clean out of her suit later? But no, once it had dried it took a lot of effort to loosen it once more. And—

She paused, turning to eye the warm tub that Spiral still sat in. There was a solution...

With a brief blip of sanzai to Beryl, Talon concentrated on concealing her intentions… just long enough.

The tub embedded into the floor of the bathing compartment was far from deep enough to safely dive into, but Talon still managed to raise a good-sized wave as she quickly submerged herself and her suit.

Spiral yelped via sanzai as the water splashed up her tilted-back head, dampening her hair against the floor tiles once more. <That was just almost dried!> She mock-complained, one foot kicking softly against Talon underwater.

<Don’t worry, we’re going to be here a while anyways.> Talon indicated her diral-sister’s own flight armor, still sitting on the rack by the door where it had been hung. <Unless you were planning on leaving that un-cleaned?>

With a sigh, Spiral drew herself out of the tub and padded over, bare feet slapping against the friction-tiles. She laid the armor down on one of the cleaning-tables, but paused and looked over at Talon. <Doesn’t that crust-stuff get stuck in the water filters if you clean your suit in the tub?>

<It did on Tempest, yes.> Talon sent back, her sub-channels filled with her satisfaction as the grime floated away easily under the effects of scrubbing and soaking both. <But maybe on a dedicated carrier, the designers were smart enough to use better filters in the water recyclers.> She glanced up and smiled at her caste-sister. <Besides, even if not, we’ll likely be off the ship by the time the gallen down in Engineering come up here to complain.>

<If anyone asks, it was your idea.> sent Spiral, as she dragged her own armor into the tub as well. Her side-channels replayed the time that every one of Tempest’s tenoin pilots had been ordered into formation to receive an angry berating from a blue-in-the-face Gallen Bastobar Wavecrest.

Talon sent back her laughter, before turning her attention to Beryl. <Did the torrai say when we would be leaving Storm Surge?>

<Are you feeling worried, tenoin?> Beryl asked with a smile.

<Mostly I just want to hit back against the Shells.> Talon sent, truthfully. <We still owe them for the destruction of Tempest.>

That chilled the sanzai in the compartment. A few of Tempest’s warriors that were still drying their hair glanced over at the three of them. One of them, a soroin seinen that Talon vaguely recognized as a bridge tactical officer, sent gruffly <Give them a beating for the rest of us, too.>

Talon sent a questioning pulse at Beryl.

<Right, you were asleep.> The listel sent back. <Most of the soroin are being shuttled over to the ships of Strikeforce-51. Only a few of us are remaining aboard the Did Ever Plummet Sound.> The alien ship name did not sound any less strange in sanzai.

<And we are going ahead of the Strikeforce to scout the system first?> Talon asked, to confirm what Beryl’s side-channels had hinted.

<That is what the Lashret told us.>

<Will she be going with us?> Talon wasn’t sure if she liked the thought of the strict officer breathing down her hair during a mission like that.

<She is returning to command the Strikeforce, from aboard Tsunami.>

Talon laughed. <I do not think she will much like commanding from aboard another captain's ship like a senior flag officer, prevented from also leading her own ship. Unless she is displacing Mazeit Moonglow?> Junior tenoin or not, in a formation as tightly-knit as Strikeforce-51 every warrior from paset on up followed the… colorful personalities of their Torrai commanders.

<I do not think so.> Sent Beryl.

<Agreed.> added one of the soroin, a bridge fire-control officer. The older loroi quirked a smile. <Outright taking over Moonglow’s ship would make Torret Ashrain stand out more in the squadron. And Stillstorm would rather shave herself bald than boost the Emperor’s family member any more than what her own accomplishments earned.>

Soft laughter reverberated through the compartment.

The junior soroin rinsing shampoo out of the previous sender’s hair added <If she gets too good at commanding the formation in the style that a flag officer is supposed to, they might have to promote her to soshret!>

That idea kicked the laughter into high gear.

<I don’t know who would hate that more: Stillstorm for being promoted away further from the front lines, or Duskcrown for having to be the one to pin her new insignia onto her!> chimed in a half-submerged doranzer.

After one final check, Talon hauled her armor out of the bath and over to the drying rack. <Well, we’ll make sure to give the Shells a good kicking for all of you.> She paused, turning back to Beryl. <That is, what is our mission? If we’re being detached to stay aboard the human ship?>

<We are being sent ahead of Strikeforce-51, which will be entering the system along with the Tinza fleet.> Beryl sent back. <The torrai believe that the Shells might have found some other source of human artifacts besides the bunker where we found Colonel Jardin and his warriors. If that source was also aboard the Ring, then it has left the system. But if it was elsewhere in the system, then the Shells may attempt to bombard and destroy it when they see our fleet coming.>

Talon nodded, grinning hungrily and thinking of Jardin’s plan with the hangar technicians. <But if there is a sneaky prowler waiting with torpedoes...>

<Then we might be able to stop them.> Beryl confirmed.

<That will be very satisfying.> Talon sent.

One of the junior soroin from earlier asked <What is it like, working on the small ship’s bridge with the humans?>

Spiral appeared at Talon’s side, flight armor just as clean. <They called it the ‘cockpit,’ as if it were a very large fighter. That fits how small it is compared to a ship, really.>

Beryl added, <Their computer systems are strange. They can translate their displays into Trade, which is nice except it means that it has been difficult to gain any understanding of their actual language.> The listel pouted briefly. <But the systems themselves are so very… muddled. Their sensors, navigation, data storage and processing all seems to be tied up with every other field. Not separated for easier understanding.>

<It makes sense to me.> Talon sent with a shrug. <As Spiral sent, it’s like a large fighter. There are separate seats for what Alex said were the ‘weapons’ and ‘sensors’ stations, but they can each control any system for redundancy. The flight crew can split up tasks for faster working, or switch if one member needs to take a break.>

<So strange to run a warship that way.> One of the other bridge officers sent. <Do they cross-train all of their castes in each other’s duties?>

Spiral answered with a hint of pride, <Alex knows a bit about a doranzer’s work, enough to get the medical systems prepared ahead of time!>

The doranzer pulling herself out of the tub nodded at that. <That was a nice surprise. Saved us some time when we brought the wounded aboard, and every solon counted.>

<I don’t think they actually have castes.> mused Beryl. Several minds immediately turned to the listel, pinging her for more explanation. <I was talking to their Colonel on the flight back, and he told me some of how their society used to be, early in the Wars against the Soia.>

The mood in the compartment darkened slightly at the reminder of just who had done most of the fighting on behalf of those awful Soia.

Beryl continued, <He says that their warriors used to be often just born-civilians who ‘decided’ to join their military, and passed the acceptance trials. And that military positions were determined at those trials, not influenced much by what career their mother held… if she had even been a warrior at all.>

Several loroi boggled at the strange idea. <I don’t know which is weirder: ‘armed civilians’ or putting adults — civilian adults! — through diral-trials to see who would be put into what caste.>

<It does sound strange.> Beryl agreed, although her sub-channels betrayed how fascinated she was by the alien way of organizing a society. <Although he did say that their people became more militarized during the Wars, and by the end almost every human went through warrior training.>

<Now that sounds like the sort of people that our ancestors would side with.> A soroin sent with satisfaction.

Talon and Spiral shared a glance. Had the whole ‘exactly which loroi ended up on the Sister Worlds’ story not spread to the other warriors, yet?

Before either tenoin could send anything, a focused burst of sanzai lanced into them. <Do not bring up that topic. We are… ‘controlling’ just how that particular truth gets out, and when.>

Talon’s eyes followed the source of the message to a gap between the milling loroi, through which she could see the Mizol Parat from earlier staring back at her. The red-eyed warrior sat with her uniform folded over her lap, adjusting her hair with the aid of a mirror folded out from the wall.

<Affirmative, Mizol Parat.> sent back both tenoin as tightly as they could. Even in the traditionally rank-less atmosphere of a ship’s baths, it was unwise to be anything less than respectful to the senior political officer.

Besides, Talon could see her point. That whole revelation certainly hadn’t sat well with her; there was good reason to be careful in just how it was revealed to the rest of the warriors of the fleet, and eventually the Union.

As long as the truth did come out in the end, of course. Warriors did not hide even uncomfortable truths from other warriors… at least not forever.

<Incidentally,> the mizol continued, <the Lashret wishes to convey her appreciation of the progress that you two have made on your… ‘side mission.’ While the humans are happy to work with us in discovering where the Enemy acquired their other UNSC artifact, it is still unknown what Colonel Jardin and his warriors will do after that question is answered. Your efforts in establishing some control over Ensign Jardin may become very useful to the Union.>

Talon stepped into her undersuit, Beryl helping her get the armor on over it. She chose not to send an answer to the mizol unless posed a direct question; the idea that she and Spiral were manipulating Alex rather than forming a new friendship was insulting.

After enough solon had passed to make it clear that neither tenoin would answer her, the mizol sent a brief burst of amusement via sanzai, and cut the link.

Turning around to help Beryl into her own armor, Talon grimaced. The sneaky mizol always knew how to ruin a good bathing session — and it was supposed to be relaxing, too!

With the greater privacy afforded by their proximity, Beryl sent <It was also told to me just now about how Stillstorm… ‘encouraged’ you to act towards Ensign Jardin. I would like to apologize for certain of my remarks towards you both, earlier.>

Spiral mentally brushed it off. <No insult was received, tozet.> She mentally winked at the two of them. <We would have acted the same even without her instructions!>

The listel simply shook her head, smiling slightly as Talon clicked the last fastener closed on her armor.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Coming up on emergence… now.” Alex said.

This time, Did Ever Plummet Sound slipped smoothly back into realspace, like a nimai diving into the water.

“Looks like those calculations were spot-on.” The human pilot said, looking over at Talon with a quick smile. “I think our combined method worked perfectly.”

“Indeed so.” Beryl said, observing from behind their stations.

Talon asked, “And you are certain that this ship emits no jump signature when it is arriving in a system?”

Beryl answered “The sensor crew from Storm Surge confirmed that this ship was only spotted on their sensors when it entered the gas giant’s atmosphere. They detected no emergence point beforehand. And they were less than three light-solon away from where we did enter the system.”

Amazing. Talon nodded in appreciation. An actual stealth ship, in space!

“Quarter-million years later, and she’s still doing the UNSC proud.” Alex patted part of the console. He craned his head to look back at Spiral. “What have we got on sensors?”

The junior tenoin announced “Count is four in Divisions of Shell ships.” Glee glowed through her sanzai. “Looking like Ring-opened tear did erase two Divisions in entirety!”

Two hundred Enemy ships, pulled into slipspace along with the UNSC prowler. And without slipspace drives of their own…

Talon grinned. It looked like the Union forces would actually outnumber the Shells, for once. See how they liked it! “I think maybe they were the fortunate ones, when the Tinza fleet and Fifty-One arrive.”

“Any unusual ship formations? Patrol vectors?” Alex asked.

“None that are being obvious.” Spiral said. “Not— I see now some, over there!” She pointed to her display. “One smallish division, above that large moon that is orbiting a gas giant. They are escorted and all have their engines not on. I think maybe they are trying to be not so easy to see.”

The three other warriors in the cockpit all looked at the Shell warships shown.

“Those are transports.” Beryl confirmed. “Troop transports, linked to the tankers. But why are they refueling there…?” She sent to Spiral <Can you focus the sensors on that planetary surface, just below them?>

Spiral carefully tapped at a few controls. <The passive sensors are set. I think even the Shells would not be blind enough not to see us if we bounce active sensors off of them.>

<That won’t be necessary… yet.> Beryl sent, peering closely at the readings. Aloud, she said “There are more Enemy transports, landed on the planet! Those are troop carriers, it seems.”

“Landing ground-pounders on a desolate moon?” Alex asked. “And being sneaky about it. That looks like it’s worth a closer look.” He reached for his headset.

“No need; I heard.” his Uncle’s voice came from the open doorway. “The bug-bots snooping around somewhere is reason enough to investigate. Take us in close as you can without being spotted.” He looked to Talon. “Looks like you’ll get to try out your new toys, when the fleet arrives.”

Talon grinned inside her helmet, turning back to her console. The prowler shifted underneath her, maneuvering towards the Shell formation. And she had a ‘gift’ ready for them!

Fingers danced across the controls, checking the field-rigged communications between the Plummet’s weapons systems and the Union armaments in her bays. Four SR torpedoes and eight small kinetic missiles. A loadout equivalent that carried by a single heavy fighter much smaller than the prowler, yes, but with the advantage of surprise over the Shells...

“What are they doing down there?” Colonel Jardin mused to himself. Talon kept working on the test checklist given to her by Storm Surge’s gallen, her mind only briefly examining the image sent to her by Spiral.

Multiple Shell transports, landed on the surface in a rough circle. Even at this distance, the prowler’s sensors could make out the milling crowds of Umiak workers in the open area in the middle. And—

“They’re… digging for something.” said Alex. “Think it’s the place they got that backpack-jammer from?”

“I can’t see how.” his Uncle replied. “We’re the only UNSC assets ever on record in this system.”

“Until we went into hibernation on the Ring.” Alex pointed out, excitement clear in his voice. “Maybe someone came after us?”

“Would have to have been from the evacuation fleet; every remaining ship was tasked there. And we never told anyone the coordinates of this system.”

Talon interjected “Then it seems that there will be only one way to go find out.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Tinza fleet should be seen making arrival in thirty solon.” Spiral announced.

“Noted.” The Colonel said. “Weapons?”

“Both torpedoes are closing on their targets.” Talon reported. “Will be in detonation range of their tanker formation ten solon after the fleet’s light reaches us. All kinetic missiles are ready to launch.”

Did Ever Plummet Sound waited in close orbit of the moon, nose pointed towards the Shell excavation below. The prowler’s port-side weapons bay was still closed, but Talon had already selected six AMM-250 kinetic missiles and fed them their targets. The moment that the fleet’s jump signature became visible to the Shells here, those eight weapons would go live.

“Twenty solon before arriving.”

With any luck, that would mean that all Enemy vessels near whatever they were searching would be destroyed before they could deny it to the loroi.

“Fifteen solon— jump signature!” Spiral announced. “It is the Tinza fleet!”

Impressively close to the estimated arrival time, given the distance of the jump.

“Engage weapons.” The Colonel ordered.

Talon, whose hands had been waiting above the controls, sent the prepared command.

Barely eight thousand mannal from the Shell transports lying low in orbit, two torpedo drives ignited. Taimat combustion byproducts streamed out behind them as they raced towards the tethered-together tankers and transports.

The Enemy sensor operators would have had barely four solon to detect the incoming torpedoes, acquire a sensor lock, and engage with what point-defense weapons the transports had.

They failed.

Two blasts flared into being as the torpedoes and the tankers’ own fuel detonated as one. The searing-bright explosion that consumed the vessels was bright enough that Talon had to narrow her eyes, even twenty thousand mannal distant.

At the same beat, the Plummet rocked underneath her six times, as the kinetic missiles dropped free of their weapons bay and ignited their own drives.

Screaming downwards through the planet’s thin atmosphere, the missiles each struck one of the landed transports. It would have been more efficient to use the Type-D kinetic missiles against such immobile targets, but the more versatile Type-250 worked well enough.

Six reactor cores, split by the impacts, detonated within three solon.

Fragments of hull flew high into the air, spiraling outwards from the craters scorched into the surface. They soared on ballistic arcs, several thousand mannal high, before plunging back down.

One of them shifted aside just before impact.

“Ground team’s making their assault.” Alex said, watching armored figures sprinting towards the shattered Shell dig site.

They were momentarily obscured by a cloud of dust raised by the debris impact, but it had safely missed them thanks to the last-minute telekinetic nudge. He continued, “Looks like that teidar’s as good as you said she was.”

“She is known to be strong even by the standards of her caste.” Talon said.

A few sparkles of weapons-fire illuminated the scene, crippled Shells being finished off.

“So far,” the Colonel muttered, “so go—”

“There is movement on the other moon! The most near one!” Said Spiral, her sanzai emphasizing how frustrating it was to be limited to vocal speech. It was fast enough for fleet-scale fighting — usually — but at ranges this close every solon counted.

“I see them.” The older human said grimly. “Small craft, high acceleration, headed for the dig site… gunboats of some kind?”

Talon pulled up a smaller repeat of the sensor display on her screen, following along with her diral-sister’s explanation.

“Affirmative. Those are their more small gunboats. But their plasma weapons would be very little effective in atmosphere. Why then—?”

The tenoin’s question was answered a beat later. Even though all eyes saw the readout, she still called out “Torpedo tracks! Count is two. Time until impact on site of digging is six hundred solon.”

Talon was halfway through plotting an intercept trajectory for the Plummet’s two remaining AMMs even before the Colonel ordered it. “Good work. And get a firing solution for their gunboats, too. We can’t assume those were the only munitions they had.”

Not too likely; by their readings, those were heavy torpedoes, not much smaller than the gunboats that launched them. They must have been prepared for just this task — scuttling the dig site. Paranoid Shells had set up a stealthy ‘backup’ way to destroy the site even if their orbiting vessels and ground team were destroyed!

“I have a firing trajectory for their torpedoes.” She announced. “But once we launch, the Enemy will see the interceptor missiles incoming. If they have other munitions, they will then surely send them.”

Normally it wasn’t her place to send — or ‘say’ — such obvious observations, but the humans had no experience fighting the Shells. They could not be entirely familiar with how the Enemy thought.

“Understood.” He paused for a few solons. “Launch the interceptors and torpedo at their respective targets, but set them to delay engine activation for as long as you safely can and still make an intercept. On a ship that small, they can’t have more than one or two sensor operators. We’ll just give them something else to look at.”

He turned aside. “Alex, move us around as far to their other side as we can in the time we’ve got. Thirty seconds before our munitions have to light their engines, open our baffles and flare the engines. If these guys have never seen a stealth ship before, that should keep their eyes on us.”

His nephew asked “And if they fire on us?”

“Don’t get hit.”

Talon announced “Weapons solutions are calculated.” She immediately set to entering the estimated effective weapons range of the Umiak gunboats into the prowler’s analysis systems. She’d faced enough craft like them in her fighter before; she knew their characteristics by heart at this point.

“Fire.”

Plummet rocked gently as the weapons slipped from her now almost-empty weapons bays. Only a single torpedo remained.

“Moving now, sir.” Alex announced, the screen showing his projected route. “We should be able to almost leave their weapons range by the time we have to draw their attention.” He glanced aside at Talon, nodding sharply. “Thanks for the OPFOR outline.”

The solons seemed to crawl past as Did Ever Plummet Sound crept across the track of the incoming Shells. Talon felt sweat beading along her back as she eyed the enemy torpedoes accelerating towards the moon’s surface below.

They would be easy enough for the AMMs to intercept, yes; a frontal-quarter approach on targets that would likely kill their engines and go ballistic well before impact. That’s what she would have done, if she’d launched them: preserve as much of the explosive taimat fuel as possible for the actual detonation.

Finally, the time approached.

“Open baffles in fifteen solon.”

“Ready on your command.” Alex said, holding one hand above a set of controls off to the side of his station.

“Missiles will go active within eight solon.” Talon added.

“Open baffles.” The Colonel commanded.

A brief alarm chirped as Alex flipped the toggle. “We’re visible. Pulsing engines.”

The ship shuddered underneath them, Colonel Jardin holding tight onto the back of his nephew’s seat.

Another alarm. One that Talon recognized.

“Search radar.” Alex announced, his hands gripping the piloting controls. “We’d be well within burn-through range for a UNSC set; let’s see how long it takes these guys.”

Only a few beats later, the alarm rose in pitch and doubled in frequency.

Alex nodded. “Acquisition radar. They’ll have a lock in ten solon.”

“Facing change!” said Spiral. “They are turning to point most near towards us!”

Talon had her own announcement. “Missiles are going hot.”

“Decoy away.” said Alex calmly, as something clunked from deep in the ship. “Baffles closed.”

“Weapons fire!” announced Spiral.

“Missed the decoy.” observed Colonel Jardin. “It’s still running.”

“Fifteen solon until AMM intercept. Twenty-eight until torpedo impact on gunboats.” said Talon, eyeing the converging icons on her display.

The Shells were too late to shoot down the kinetic missiles, but their point-defense plasma weapons would cycle in time to get another shot at the incoming torpedo… or one last shot at the Plummet or its decoy.

“Decoy is maneuvering.” Alex said. “Making like it's turning away to run.”

Talon blinked, leaning slightly to one side and looking out the cockpit window. “And we’re moving closer?”

“Better angles on the bow; Plummet’s hardest to see from dead ahead.” explained their pilot.

Talon nodded. “That does make much sens—”

She flinched back instinctively as a bright flash of light blanketed the window.

“Near miss!” announced Spiral, while Talon blinked at the after-image covering her vision. “Most near, but miss!”

Very near indeed, if the energy bleeding off the concentrated bolt had still been so bright.

That was one gunboat’s last quartet of shots.

“Decoy’s hit.” said Alex, voice impressively calm despite the near-death experience. “It’s going to be visibly not a ship, now.”

“Gunboat is turning.” said Spiral.

Towards the incoming torpedo, then. The Shells must be screaming at their sensor operator, to have missed their approaching death until the last second.

But was there still time?

“Five solon until impact.” said Talon. In all the excitement, she’d missed the moment the two AMMs obliterated their targets.

The ground team was safe, at least for now.

Her eyes were glued to the torpedo’s icon as it raced in towards the gunboats. Three… two…

“Weapons f—!” Spiral shouted, cutting herself off as the flash blinked in the cockpit window.

Talon would say this about the Shells on that gunboat: they had a good pilot, to throw their bow around that quickly.

But it hadn’t saved them.

“Both targets destroyed.” confirmed Talon, as the blast faded.

“The Shells fired even at the most late solon.” said Spiral, her subconscious sanzai echoing Talon’s own mild admiration of the Shells. “And hit the torpedo. It did not much help them, although.”

“Not at that range.” added Alex. “That said, it’s pretty impressive that they made the shot.”

“I’m always happy to compliment an enemy… once they’re dead.” said his uncle. The Colonel shook his head, smiling thinly. “What’s the status on the ground team?”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

<Any new information?> Fireblade asked.

<That one knew nothing.> Tempo responded from several hundred mannal behind, sprinting to catch up to the advancing loroi. Just barely within sanzai range; it took some concentration for Fireblade to receive her sending. <Just a laborer.>

That distance still put the mizol well ahead of the ODSTs twice as far again behind her. The humans had technology that was well beyond that of the Union, yes, but the aliens themselves were not quite up to the physical standards of a well-toned loroi.

At least, not for a ten-thousand mannal sprint across the broken terrain of this moon. The prowler had had to drop the ground team off quite a distance from the dig site to maintain stealth. And with the tight time schedule…

The humans would understand.

<Six heavy transports.> Fireblade sent, emphasizing the size of the craft whose ruins now jutted from the sand around them. <Up to 1,200 Shells maximum. Assuming a usual distribution, around eighty Hardtroops; the rest will be primarily laborers.>

<And no map.> noted the mizol. <We will be attacking blind.>

<There are only eighty of them that count.> sent one of the other two teidar that made up their four-loroi assault team. <They may as well chew on their blaster muzzles now, and save us the effort.> Several tendrils of her lime-green hair had worked their way to the front of her face, visible through her helmet visor as they bounced in front of her eyes. Mothwing always had kept her hair a bit longer than her junior rank would normally justify.

Good thing teidar didn’t use only their eyes to spot the enemy.

<And save themselves the pain.> sent the third. Razorthorn was one of the few other loroi who matched Fireblade’s own hatred for the Enemy in all their forms.

The four loroi approached a rise, not pausing in their charge.

Almost all of the scattered Shell bodies around them that had been smashed to the ground by the earlier blasts were dead already; the few miraculous survivors received a telekinetic snap to the neck as the warriors stormed past.

<The vertical excavation shaft should be two-hundred mannal ahead of us, once we crest this ridge.> Sent Fireblade, her side-channels explaining the plan.

Spreading out, the three teidar waited for Tempo to catch up and take her own place in the spread-out formation.

<Ready.> sent the mizol. Impressively, her sanzai betrayed no tiredness from her exertion.

<Go.> Sand kicked up into the alien sky as Fireblade sprinted forwards.

A mind-signature flared into detection nearby, alarmed at the sound of her footsteps.

She slammed a hammer of force into the signature which had been so kind as to make itself easily detectable.

Her head passed the top of the rise.

Even more Shells lay dead on the ground, scattered around the hundred-mannal-wide plain. Regular Shells walked among them, lifting some and dragging others. Either medics, or perhaps body disposal; but so soon after the attack?

Not her problem.

Closer to her, the corpse of the hardtroop whose mind she had pulverized had not yet fully fallen to the ground.

Even before it landed, three more joined it in death.

The overlapping blast craters from the destroyed transports had raised a ridge in a rough circle around the dig site, and atop that ridge stood four loroi, gazing down at the milling, blast-shocked Shells below.

And with three of them being teidar, ‘gazing’ proved lethal.

<That’s twenty-three for me!> crowed Mothwing, as Shells clattered to the ground. <You, Razorthorn?>

<Sufficient.> the other teidar replied curtly. <The field is clear.>

<Movement!> Sent Fireblade, eyes flicking to the machinery at the top of the excavation tunnel in the center of the corpse-strewn field.

The four sprinted forwards as the cargo elevator installed there whirred to life and dropped down, climbing along the cable down and out of sight.

Almost fast enough to keep the four Shells aboard the cargo platform from being seen… but they were outside of the range of her powers. A blaster bolt from Razorthorn sent the fifth Shell toppling into the open chasm from where it had stood on the precipice.

The cable wobbled as one of the other teidar twisted it, metal groaning. <Like insects on a fishing line.> sent Razorthorn.

<Halt!> Sent Tempo with alarm, kneeling well behind them at the side of a dying Shell.

The cable stilled.

<Explain.> Sent Fireblade, the three teidar still running towards the elevator machinery.

Tempo replied by sending a few scraps of memory from the dying Shell at her feet.

Fighting down the revulsion at seeing through the Enemy’s eyes, Fireblade nearly missed a step at the imagery. Her blood ran cold at just what she saw.

<That’s a torpedo warhead!> observed Mothwing, shocked. <Being loaded onto the elevator platform.>

<A scuttling charge for whatever they found down there. To be detonated once they reach the bottom.> replied Tempo. <Now dangling hundreds of mannal in the air, suspended by this machinery.> The four of them arrived at the top of the shaft.

The cable disappeared down into the darkness; without the sun overhead at the moment the shaft itself was utterly black beyond the first few mannal.

Fireblade eyed the cable being fed down. It was moving fast, but hopefully the platform wasn’t too distant already.

<Your pistol.> She held out her hand to Razorthorn. The purple-haired teidar immediately handed over her small blaster.

Unlike the mid-rank teidar, Mothwing couldn’t contain her confusion. <Wouldn’t shooting risk hitting the taimat?>

Fireblade took a deep breath, and glanced aside at the young teidar. <Only if I shoot at the platform.>

With that, she stepped off the edge.

Air whistled past her, and for a brief moment she hurtled through the unlit darkness.

Then a brief pulse of light as the blaster in her hand discharged a low-power bolt, illuminating the pitch-black elevator shaft.

Perhaps thirty mannal below her, the platform. Four Shells on it, surrounding a very dangerous container.

'Perhaps ' thirty mannal.

Hopefully her estimate was accurate enough.

A heartbeat later, Fireblade pulsed her powers, pushing herself upwards to arrest her velocity.

She got it almost right.

Over six hundred pilo of loroi and armor slammed hard into the platform, sending it rocking from side-to-side. Her pistol, jarred from her grip, clattered along the metal plates and disappeared over the edge.

Coughing, Fireblade pushed herself off of the floor, spitting blood from a bitten tongue onto her cracked visor.

And then immediately threw herself flat once more, as an Enemy knife-digit whistled overhead.

Her head pounded as she spun to look up at the Shell that had swung at her. Back-lit against the faint light of the top of the shaft.

It disappeared, hurled back into the darkness.

Rough landing or no, four regular Shells versus one teidar was a fight that would only ever end one way.

The one running up behind her had its head twisted around, mind broadcasting one last fading image of its own back as he crumpled to the ground.

A third reached for a pistol, only to have its arm bent over backwards. Chittering in agony, the Shell stumbled backwards… and off the small platform.

The fourth—

Fireblade hammered her mind into the last Shell’s psyche, freezing it solid for two beats.

Just long enough for her to carefully push it away from the button that the alien had laid one hand upon.

The button on the side of the taimat warhead.

The button that was as black as Shell blood.

As soon as the Shell’s hand was safely distant, Fireblade hurled him over the side.

And let out a breath. Forced her racing pulse to calm down.

<Fireblade, what is the situation?> Tempo asked, her sanzai faint with distance.

<The warhead is secured.> the pallan replied. Had the fight really only taken less than five solon?

The platform continued its descent while she fumbled around for the elevator controls. The only remaining illumination available came from her rank signifiers, which weren’t of much use.

<Fireblade, we have located the elevator controls. Is the platform stable enough to safely halt its descent?>

The teidar pallan scoffed. She didn’t cause that much collateral damage. With a torpedo warhead sitting right there, this was not the time to be careless with where one threw bodies, after all.

And now more and more Shell mind-signatures were fading into detectable distance, below. She must be approaching the bottom of the shaft. Fireblade grinned, the brief spike of pain from her bitten tongue not nearly enough to mar her anticipation of the upcoming fight.

<Let it continue its descent, Tempo. Once it slows at the bottom, take it back up for you three. I will clear the landing area down here by the time you arrive.>

Tempo’s bemused thoughts were only barely receivable at this distance as she acknowledged.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Two hundred solon later, Fireblade stood waiting and watching as the rest of the ground team caught up, walking towards her down the long side-tunnel that she had cleared.

Say what one will about these aliens’ comparative lack of physical endurance, but at least their gallen — or equivalent — had thought to build bright flashlights into their helmets. And their weapons.

The ODSTs swept their bright beams across the Shells scattered around the floor.

And the walls.

“[Jesus fuck, what a mess. She did this by herself?]” One of the humans spoke; a younger one, by how his voice sounded. The flashlight slung under his rifle lingered on the hardtroop half-body embedded in the rocky ceiling overhead. Fireblade was quite proud of that — what better way was there to check the structural integrity of a recently-excavated tunnel's roof, after all?

“[Yeah, makes me feel like a damn tourist. Just following behind the devastation. Didn’t get shot at, though. Could get used to that.]” A second, also young.

“[I’ll say. Where were people like her during the Wars?]” The first, again.

Then their second-in-command spoke, her aged voice rather more appropriate for a warrior. “[On the other side.]”

<Any issues?> Tempo asked.

<Negative. All Shell signatures within the outer dig site eliminated.>

<’Outer’?> asked teidar Mothwing.

Fireblade simply stepped aside, letting the helmet-light that one of the ODSTs had played on her illuminate the letters at her back.

The faded white letters printed on a buried metal surface not of Shell or Union manufacture.

But she’d seen others like them before.

Like on the armor of the ODST in front of her, frozen at the sight.

[EMERGENCY AIRLOCK 085-DORSAL]

[UNSC MANDELBROT INF-131]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

SpoilerShow

I hadn't *planned* it that way, but between the poor lighting, the non-hardtroop Umiak workers, and the narrow tunnel, Fireblade got to do a pretty decent recreation of the Darth Vader scene in Rogue One. She does seem to 'play with her food' even more than Vader, though.

[Urist]

Dust swirled as the prowler lifted off, Talon tilting her head back to watch it ascend. In solon, it rose high enough to disappear into the dark sky.

A shape approached, shadowed by the dust. <Talon? Are you and the Colonel ready to go?>

<Affirmative, Beryl.> The pilot sent back. She and Spiral had chosen by random chance who would remain aboard the Plummet and who would go with Colonel Jardin to investigate the buried human ship that the ground team had discovered.

Talon had won.

As a consolation prize, Spiral was left all alone with Alex on the prowler. She hadn’t exactly been disappointed, especially when Beryl promised to show her the memories of the ship later.

“Ah, tozet Beryl.” Said the Colonel, as the listel reached them amidst the settling dust. “Lead on.”

The three left for the top of the Shell-excavated shaft, Beryl’s excitement leaking through her sanzai even as she spoke aloud. “It is true that this vessel is one of your evacuation craft?”

“It’s supposed to be.” he replied. “I am very interested to see what it’s doing out here, though.”

“Because of the depth from the surface at which it was found, it seems that it has been here a great time.” Beryl said.

“All the more mysterious, then.”

They reached the elevator, and departed downwards. Talon asked, “How far down is the ship?”

“It is four hundred mannal down to the hatch which the Shells uncovered.” Explained Beryl. “It is not yet discovered how deep that is compared to the rest of the vessel. We do not know the precise size of the vessel.”

“For an Infinity-class?” The Colonel said. “They’re big colonial transports. Six klicks long, one tall, almost one wide. In Soia units, ah, a bit under eight-thousand mannal long, thirteen-hundred tall, one-thousand wide.”

Talon and Beryl exchanged wide-eyed stares. Even the largest mobile warships of the Union barely reached one-thousand mannal in length.

“That is gigantic! And these were warships?” Beryl asked.

“Armed transports.” the human said. “They were first built towards the tail end of the First War, as independent evacuation ships that would scatter out into the galaxy, each enough to carry a self-sustaining human population. It’s still a secret just how many ONI built, but I know a few were retrofitted as heavy warships when things stabilized slightly during the first few decades of the Second War.”

Beryl shook her head, as the elevator approached the bottom of the shaft. “Then it is no surprise why your ODST leader did not wish to explore within the vessel blindly with just our few numbers.”

“Definitely.” The Colonel tapped the datapad carried at his hip as the three of them disembarked. “For one thing, without the map I pulled from the Plummet, it would take us far too long to find our way to anything useful. And in the meantime, there’s still an unknown number of Bug-bots aboard the Mandelbrot.”

“They will be little threat to us.” Said Talon with confidence. Fighting within the confines of a ship was the environment that played most to the strengths of the loroi. Few opportunities for enemies to engage from far enough away to be out of detection range.

“Depends on what they’ve found in there.” Countered the Colonel. “The Mandelbrot should have been one of the disarmed ships of the evacuation fleet, but the fact that she’s back here indicates that the plan changed. And an Infinity-class that’s been rearmed has quite a few nasty weapons aboard. It shouldn’t have been any easier for these Shells to explore the ship blind than it would be for us, but we don’t know how long they’ve been at it. If they’ve found an intact armory or main engineering...”

They walked in silence for a hundred solon, until the mind-signatures of the rest of the ground team came into range.

Well, the loroi ones, at least; it was still eerie to only sense the ODSTs waiting there once she could physically see them herself.

“[Sir.]” The ODST leader said. “[Any idea what happened? To the evac fleet?]”

“[No more than you do, Sarah. But we know where to go for answers.]” The Colonel said. Turning to the lead teidar, he added in Trade “My people will take point, once we’re inside. Better familiarity with the environment, and all that.”

After a few solon, the teidar nodded.

Talon eyed the field-patched crack that crossed the red-haired loroi’s visor, and sent quietly to Beryl <What damaged her helmet?>

<She jumped from the surface onto the cargo elevator when it was halfway down the shaft.>

That was well over a hundred mannal, straight down. <Is that… normal behavior for teidar?> Talon had not had much cause to interact with members of that caste, before. It was only recently that the tenoin found herself pressed into ground battles. Not what she had mostly trained for, but the rewards had been worth it thus far. And every warrior was expected to maintain her abilities as an individual combatant, a task which Talon had not let slip.

<For her? Yes.> Beryl sent back, sub-channels radiating amusement at the teidar she had come to consider a friend.

The loroi in question sent to the team <We teidar will follow close behind the human warriors. Tempo will translate between us and the aliens. Beryl, you and the pilot will stay behind us.>

A wave of acknowledgments came back.

Meanwhile, one of the humans crouched next to the control station by the ancient airlock. “[Ready to crank it open on command, sir.]”

“[Understood. Remember people, gloves are off now. No holding back. Get it open, Private.]”

Metal shrieked as the airlock hatch slowly ground open under the muscle power of a single human.

“[They’ll definitely know we’re coming, now.]”

“[Pretty sure they figured that out when all their buddies up here got turned into soup.]”

The humans slipped through the opening as soon as it was wide enough, followed shortly by the teidar.

As she passed through the loroi-sized airlock, Talon eyed it. <Could hardtroops really fit through this?>

<Knowing the Shells,> replied Beryl, <They might have removed some of their limbs first and re-attached them afterwards.>

Talon shuddered at the thought.

The inside of the vessel was pitch-black, illuminated only by the flashlights of the ODSTs and a the clip-on stronger lights that Talon had carried down from the ship and were now attached to each loroi’s suit.

Advancing down the cramped corridor, Beryl observed <The vessel is in remarkably good condition given its likely age.>

Ahead, Colonel Jardin inspected his datapad. “Wall markings say we’re about a kilometer forward of the main atrium, just above the crew quarters. We’ll head to the nearest transit shaft and head down to main engineering first. That should have hard-copy records of any ship refits or equipment transfers; it’ll give us an idea what to look for from there.”

The humans took off running down the corridor, the loroi keeping pace behind them.

After some solons, Beryl sent <Interesting.>

Talon looked over at the listel. <?>

<In our attack on the ground camp earlier,> the white-haired loroi continued as the group threaded their way through corridors and intersections <the ODSTs were running significantly slower, and the teidar left them well behind.>

<Leaving the fighting to the teidar?> asked Talon. <Do they already know the red-haired one so well as to realize how she would appreciate having the Shells left to her?>

<Possible.> Beryl mused. <But I think it is also likely that they were observing the teidar in action, seeing how they fought.>

Talon frowned. <They feel 'suspicious' towards us?> She’d certainly never gotten that feeling from Alex, but she hadn’t interacted with any of their ODST warriors. And from what Alex had explained about this ‘ONI,’ his uncle was some sort of human mizol: he was probably always suspicious of those around him.

<It seems more likely that they wished to determine how much faith they could put in our warriors’ abilities.> She glanced at Talon, as the two of them caught up with the group stopped in front of a large, wide door spanning the opposite side of a T-intersection. <They have seen how well you tenoin fight in space, and now they wished to see how well teidar fight on the ground.>

Talon straightened up at the compliment.

Up ahead, one of the human warriors had again knelt by a manual-opening crank. “[Ready, sir.]”

“[Open it.]”

As soon as the door ahead opened a crack, air whistled past the group and into the compartment beyond.

“The transit tubes were pumped down to vacuum.” mused the Colonel. “Quite interesting.”

“Is that normal?” asked Tempo.

“If they expected combat or serious damage, yes.”

<Since their ship ended up crashed hundreds of mannal underground, I think they were right.> sent Talon.

<It is not for certain that they crashed underground.> Beryl sent, her side-channels granting glimpses of her rapid thoughts. <The geological features in the area are—> She froze.

Several solons passed, while air continued to vent.

<Beryl?> asked Tempo.

<The dig site!> Beryl sent the overhead image that they had all first glimpsed from the Plummet’s first approach to the moon. The image slowly pulled back, showing the location of the dig site in context.

...at the end of a long, smooth-edged valley. Old and weathered, enough that it hadn’t stood out as a notable feature earlier, but now?

Talon’s eyebrows rose. <You think that they caused that?>

<A ship of that size, crashing at significant speed? It is possible, assuming that the vessel could be made strong enough to survive the impact.>

One of the teidar standing by the door whirled around to look back at them. For a moment, Talon thought that the purple-haired loroi was reacting to their conversation — neither she nor Beryl had been trying to keep their sending private — but then she registered that the teidar’s focus reached past them.

<Hardtroop. Thirty mannal distant. Side-corridor.> A loud thunk echoed down their own corridor, followed by a rattling of metal. <Eliminated.>

The three teidar looked around, scanning to the sides, above, and below. <No more Shells within detection range.> confirmed the one who had acted.

Tempo nodded. <They knew that at least one teidar was part of our party. They have likely dispersed throughout the ship; the Enemy knows that they can’t face a teidar, but they can force us to travel in a group for protection.>

The red-haired teidar — ‘Fireblade,’ if Talon remembered Beryl’s sending earlier correctly — added <Then it is fortunate that that was already our plan.> She eyed Tempo and added a brief message.

Which the mizol then repeated aloud “Keep your vision sharp for Enemy explosive traps. They may have had time to bring such equipment in to this vessel with them.”

“Noted, thank you.” Colonel Jardin said. The rushing air had finally died down, and the door was cranked open only just enough for one loroi or human to pass through. No reason to make it any easier for the hardtroops to follow. “On the plus side, with the ship pumped down for combat, we can tell if a compartment’s likely to have been breached recently.”

Good point.

The group filed through, lights illuminating a metal cargo platform, hanging over a bottomless shaft and suspended from a vertical metal rail that ran from the shadowed depths below up in a curve off to a side route. “[Corporal Anders, is it safe to use?]” asked the human Colonel.

One of the ODSTs stepped forward, pulling a tool from her belt. Two of the other warriors grabbed her legs and held her higher up, so that she could wave the tool past the mechanism connecting the platform to the rail. “[Wear’s within the safety limits, sir, but I wouldn’t go too fast. Don’t think we’ll be able to really put the pedal down anyways, using portable power.]”

The two supporting warriors set her back down on the plating with a clang. “[Goddamn, they really built these things to last, huh?]”

“[Structural-grade Titanium-B, in a near-vacuum, underground with no radiation or thermal exposure? It’ll last as long again and probably still be safe.]” The human gallen stepped carefully onto the platform, shifting her weight around.

The platform didn’t move.

The rest of the aliens boarded, their Colonel keying his radio “This tram should be plenty safe with just us on it. It’s a lot faster than walking.”

Talon was among the last to climb aboard, her eyes dropping to glance at the shadows below, stretching beyond the reach of their carried lights.

At her side, Beryl looked wistfully back the way they came. <The Shells hiding around the ship does mean that fully exploring this vessel will have to wait until a much larger team from the Tinza fleet can land and search it in force.>

Talon didn’t need to examine the listel’s side-channels to feel her disappointed curiosity. <It’s been here a quarter-million years. It’ll still be here waiting for you, later.>

The ODST gallen knelt by a console off to one side on the platform, opening a panel in its front. “[Backup power pack’s long-gone, of course. Guess that was a bit much to hope for.]” She pulled a fist-sized canister from her belt and reached into the depths of the machine.

Underfoot, the platform lurched slightly. “[And there we go.]”

Talon peered at the alien energy carbine slung over the human’s shoulder. Specifically, the identical canister which was attached just forward of the main grip. She pinged an alert to Beryl. <It seems that the humans use a standardized energy pack for their machinery and small-arms both.>

That was the sort of technological trick that was sure to interest the listel and bring her mood up. Talon had heard enough hangar-technician gallen complaining about the logistics of managing many machines — hand tools, APUs, munitions carts, etc. — each with their own slightly-different power requirements and battery packs to know what a useful bit of technology that was.

<Really?> Her plan worked; Beryl’s sub-channels radiated her own interest. <That is a most interesting design choice! The degree of centralization which it implies about their society is surprising, from what they have told us earlier.>

The purple-haired teidar grumbled <Or perhaps they don’t let aliens build most of their warriors' equipment.>

Beryl responded <That could account for it, yes. Either way, it shows a dedication towards standardization that may tell us much about their society!>

This time, it was the junior-most teidar who sent next <Well, at least we know that they truly do not so much mind being in close proximity to each other.> Her sanzai included a note about how cramped the corridor was that they had come here through, by comparison to those found aboard Loroi warships.

The platform shook slightly underfoot, before with a chorus of metallic creaks and groans it began to descend along the metal rail.

“Next stop, Main Engineering.” Colonel Jardin announced.

Talon sent to Beryl <I think that Alex would be happy to tell you much about his people’s society.>

<That is true, he is certainly friendly enough. But he is also only one person, and so is not a sufficient source for properly learning about an alien society.>

Talon glanced aside at Beryl, and shook her head with a smile. Listel.

The cargo tram traveled on, shifting smoothly — well, relatively smoothly — between vertical and horizontal travel several times. Every time they switched, there was a door ahead of them that had to be manually cranked open. Which also meant several dozen solon waiting for the air pressure to equalize before proceeding.

Tempo asked “This vessel does not have direct transit routes? Such a path as this cannot be especially efficient.”

On the plus side, there had been no further Shell contacts. The Enemy must not have penetrated too far into the ship on foot, not yet.

“The Infinity-class were designed to serve as auxiliary warships as needed. Every few compartments are grouped into reinforced sections, internally armored. The transit corridors dog-leg when they pass through, to stop a direct line from channeling a potential blast straight into the armored doors and jamming them.” Colonel Jardin responded.

That was an interesting design choice. It must have made the craft much heavier than they would otherwise have been. Loroi warships rarely bothered — the reduced maneuverability just meant that the ship was more likely to get hit in the first place. Besides, with the weapons used in modern warfare, almost any significant hit to a ship would either be stopped by the screens & armor or it would cripple the ship… at which point the vessel would be utterly unable to dodge or survive the follow-up shots which would surely follow.

Was the balance of weapons versus defenses so different, in the era of the Human-Soia wars? Or was there some calculation that she was missing? It did not seem likely that an eight-thousand mannal long ship — larger than most stations! — could dodge especially well, but she also acknowledged that she did not know what its engine systems were like.

The ride continued in silence, ODSTs and teidar sweeping their lights across the sides of the transit corridor as they swept past. The only sound was the intermittent squeaking of the millennia-old propulsion mechanism that moved the tram. Until—

“Well. So much for the direct route.” Colonel Jardin deadpanned, looking at the torn and bent metal which reached down from the ceiling to the floor, ahead. He tapped at the datapad in his hand. “Nearest access point is a maintenance tunnel fifty meters back, should take us down into engineering past the forward reactors.”

The group stepped out onto the narrow walkway mounted mid-height on one side of the corridor, presumably a maintenance aid. Once more forced into single-file, they proceeded for some distance back the way they’d come.

This next hatch was small enough that the Colonel himself crouched down and grabbed hold of the circular handle. Putting his weight into it, he unsealed the heavy metal plate and swung it down while stepping to the side to avoid the expected inrush of air.

None came.

“This section’s been opened before. Keep your weapons ready.” The human unwittingly echoed Fireblade’s simultaneous sanzai command.

He — wisely — stepped aside and let his second-in-command go first, followed by the red-haired teidar. Armored boots echoed against ancient steel, reverberating down the tiny passageway.

Thinking of which, what was it with humans and tight spaces on their ships? Was there not enough room on an eight-thousand mannal warship, that they had to squeeze every last cubic finger-length with armored plating or machinery?

Talon was the last one down the ladder, closing the hatch behind them. As a silver crest to this particular wave, at least the cramped quarters would make it difficult and slow for any hardtroops to traverse after them.

The ladder emptied out into a corridor smaller than the transit one above, but still close to what loroi would consider comfortable. The ODSTs were already halfway down to the nearest bend, moving at a jog.

Around the corner, there was another long, open stretch which led to a closed hatch some hundred mannal distant. When partway into that open space, Tempo asked pointedly <Teidar, would any of you be able to accurately employ your powers against a target as distant as the length of this corridor?>

Her side-channels highlighted both the utter lack of any form of cover in the corridor as well as the multiple small, recessed ports in the hatchway ahead. Talon’s training lay in navigation and fighter tactics rather than shipboard fighting, but it didn’t take much imagination to recognize infantry firing ports.

<Not with useful accuracy, Parat.> replied Fireblade. Her own side-channels, as well as those of her caste-sisters, signaled their agreement with the sub-verbal point that the mizol had made.

This was clearly some sort of internal-security station. One that had been designed with defending against teidar. Or ‘Guards,’ technically.

Talon shuddered as they jogged along, glancing around the featureless gray walls of the corridor. A place specifically designed by aliens to efficiently kill loroi.

How many ancient servants of the Soia had met their end in a kill-box much like this one?

The armored hatch here took longer to crank open; likely it was heavier than those not used for defensive emplacements. Colonel Jardin didn’t say anything about the place. The question was whether that was because he didn’t want to discuss the topic, or because he thought the loroi with him hadn’t made the realization themselves.

Probably the former – the human had worked enough with Tempo and Fireblade to surely realize that they would make the obvious connections between the design elements.

On the plus side, the rush of air into this next compartment reassured them that they had gotten ahead of the Shells.

“There we are.” Jardin said, as the group stepped out of a small alcove into a largely-open space. “The forward reactors, or at least one of the chambers.”

If the group had had a gallen along with them, she would certainly have been drowning the humans with questions right now.

That said, Beryl asked almost as many. “What sort of reactors were used on a vessel this large?”

“Standard catalyzed-fusion design, same as any large UNSC warship.”

“Fusion?” The listel asked. “Is that not very much inefficient compared to using refined antimatter?”

“Antimatter? On a warship? That’s just asking for a penetrating hit to the tanks or engineering to wipe the whole ship. With redundant fusion reactors, you get better survivability.”

“And significantly greater fuel use.” noted Beryl.

“Almost a hundred times the fuel mass for a catalyzed-fusion setup, if I remember my basic education. But on a ship the size of an Infinity, larger tanks aren’t much of a problem anyways. It helps that near-inert fuel is much easier to store. They’re part of the internal armoring for a lot of warships, for that matter.”

He traced one gloved hand along the long-dead display of a control console. “Sure, you can still overcharge them to get a big explosion out of one of these, but you’d have to do so from inside the ship, and deliberately.”

The group passed through another narrow corridor, turning into a compartment that looked more like an admiral’s office than anything. All it lacked was a bustling crowd of torrai sorimi and listel pasadi. “And here we go. The central maintenance offices.”

Ah. It would have been a crowd of gallen, then.

Multiple consoles and terminals lined the walls, while the interior of the room featured two parallel rows of desks, covered in dust.

Jardin stepped up to the dust and ran one finger along it. “Paper copies are gone, no surprise. I don’t think they would have lasted this long even if we hadn’t re-pressurized the place.” Walking past the desks, he stepped through a door at the back of the room which Talon had missed.

She eyed the paper-dust as the senior officers and the ODST technician followed him into the small room — presumably a senior gallen’s private office. The Colonel had said that this office would have tracked every design or loadout change made to the vessel, and likely far more besides.

Talon had heard more than a few gallen complaining during shared bathing times about how much work it was to keep up with Tempest’s maintenance, especially given that ship’s status as the last of his class. Worn-out hardware that had to be kept working with improvised ‘fixes’ because the only replacements that they could get from the Fleet wouldn’t be compatible with other systems, software that was more patch than original code, machines fooled into working by gallen carefully — and angrily — customizing the controls, stuff like that.

What would it have been like to have to track maintenance procedures for a ship from a nation that had no more replacements coming? Towards the end of humanity’s doomed defense, when vessels like this one were being prepared to flee off into the unknown? Knowing that any machine which broke down would never be replaced? And recording all of this on physical copies?

Talon carefully rested one hand on the back of the chair — normal-looking for an alien design, but then the humans weren’t exactly ‘alien’ in form — and sent a private reassurance to the memory of whatever long-dead human had once worked there. Even today, there was someone who appreciated the challenges that they must have faced.

“Ah, here. Maintenance and refit logs.” Jardin’s voice could be heard, drawing Beryl and Talon over to the small room. He stood in front of a computer terminal, a cable connecting it to the datapad in his hands. “Let’s see what they were up to... offloaded passengers and cargo, restocked weapons, and… refitted missile pods?”

The Colonel leaned one shoulder against the wall, peering down at the ‘pad. His eyebrows rose. “Last date was three months after we went under.” His helmet rose, brows furrowed as he stared off into the distance.

“[There’s one more file, sir.]” the ODST technician stood up next to him, pointing over his shoulder at something on the datapad. “[It’s not linked text, so the maintenance systems didn’t display it automatically. It looks like a video recording, but it’s not formatted as coming from engineering.]”

“[Yes, I saw it.]” Jardin’s gaze sharpened and he glanced around the room at the other humans and loroi within. “[It’s flagged as the Captain’s own log, but it’s missing any trace of the expected encryption. Hell, may as well play it; what’s a secret that’s a quarter-million years out-of-date?]” He tapped at the screen.

Talon’s eyes widened as the datapad projected a video, of a human wearing an unarmored UNSC uniform. This one certainly looked the part of an aged warrior, the sharp lines on her face framed by brown hair mostly faded to gray. Yet for all her apparently extreme age — assuming that the signs meant the same as on loroi — her green eyes were steady as they bored into the camera.

“[Date is 2620, September 19th. Final log before re-entry attempt. If you’re seeing this, the attempt was a failure and we ricocheted back into deep slipspace. Yet enough of the ship must have survived for this message to be recovered, which indicates some progress. Our navigational data and best estimates for our planned trajectory back into realspace are appended to this file.]”

The human woman leaned closer to the camera, and Talon felt Beryl’s concentration as the listel focused on memorizing every sound for when she could understand the language later. “[The most important part is that our sensors have confirmed the system we are attempting to re-enter as the source of the slipspace-realspace barrier disruptions. It’s in the star charts as the ‘Soell’ system, no visit history. We’ve confirmed our readings with UNSC Mobius and triangulated the target. My money’s on some sort of Soia pursuit-weapon, keeping the evac fleet trapped in slipspace. Damned if I know how they’re getting that to work almost a thousand light-years away, however.]”

Talon couldn’t follow the alien’s words, but just watching the expressions on the faces of the humans in the room shift from confusion to horror gave her a guess.

It wasn’t good news.

The human in the video leaned back, mouth pressing into a thin line. “[I’ve sent a copy of this log and all of our findings back to the rally point via probe. Something will get back to the fleet, no matter how our attempt goes. A second probe is set to launch when — if — we reenter realspace. You’ve apparently picked up at least one of them or you wouldn’t have found us, so Godspeed and better luck with your own efforts.

“[Admiral Keyes, out.]”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In the thousand or so solon since the video had ended, Talon hadn’t seen Colonel Jardin’s face change at all. It had been an unmoving rictus of anger and determination as he had tersely summarized the video to the loroi, it had been the same rictus as he had all-but-ordered them to follow him to the probe launch systems in the ship’s bow, and it was still the same expression that she could see now as he glanced back at the loroi following in the wake of his own warriors.

“Atmosphere’s already present in this section.” The hatch opening behind him without any movement of air confirmed his words. “The bugs are here, or have been here already. Parat Tempo, you can interrogate any of them we catch alive?”

“With physical contact, yes.” the mizol confirmed.

“Good. Teidar, when you ‘see’ one of them, take them out non-lethally if possible. We need to know if they’ve found one of Mandelbrot’s probes. That might have led them to this ship… and it could lead them to the evacuation fleet.”

Fireblade visibly bristled as the human spoke to her as if to a subordinate. But her radiating irritation didn’t last long, tamped down quickly by a wave of understanding. After a few solon, she nodded.

Not a surprise to Talon — the whole crew of Tempest had known enough about their lead teidar’s background to see why she of all people might by sympathetic to the humans’ situation. If anyone in the universe had lost as much as had a survivor of Seren, it was one of the ten aliens in front of her.

And now there was a chance of finding something of them left behind, even if it was just a lifeless fleet of transports drifting forever in the starless void of slipspace?

The ODSTs spread out through the hatchway; if Talon’s mental following of their route was correct, they should soon return to the transit vehicle that they had left behind before descending to engineering.

While the humans were silent as they moved along, a barrage of sanzai flowed back and forth.

Most of it was above Talon’s caste-grade, strategic considerations that Beryl and Tempo discussed with each other. Only occasionally did they ask a question of Talon.

<The human admiral’s message did not state how many of their vessels remained active in the evacuation fleet when she departed.> Beryl pointed out. <But yes, if that group consisted of multiple transport vessels similar to this craft, then finding them would be a significant boon to any Union researchers who could reach it.>

<Or especially if it could reach them.> Tempo responded. She pinged for Talon’s attention. <Tenoin arrir, have Alexander Jardin’s instructions on slipspace navigation mentioned how well-preserved such craft might be after many millennia of drifting there?>

Talon thought for several solon while the group jogged on. <Negative, mizol parat. But at one point he did say that Soia stasis chambers worked by shifting their contents into slipspace. That implies that being present in slipspace protects objects from decay.>

Beryl mused <And yet the chamber we entered onboard that Soia dreadstar was separately frozen in time, even though the ship as a whole was already present in slipspace. Well, the chunk of the ship that we found. Perhaps some sort of ‘pocket’ was formed?> The listel’s frustrated-but-curious side-channels emphasized just how little she — or any living loroi — knew about the strange new mechanics of this realm of FTL travel.

<It is possible then that there might be still-living people preserved aboard the ships, if we can find them?> Tempo’s sub-channels showed her tempered interest.

<Not impossible, parat.> Beryl responded hesitantly. <But the fact that the Soia added specific preservation systems within certain compartments implies that merely being present in slipspace does not entirely prevent the passage of time.>

<That is a good point.> Tempo sent. <And yet—>

<Contact.> sent Fireblade, highlighting a pair of Shell signatures that she could perceive.

“Colonel Jardin, we have detected two Enemy personnel in the next compartment.” Tempo relayed. “They are standard workers, not hardtroops.”

The ODSTs slid to a halt near the next hatch, carefully not touching it. “Can you disable them from here?” the Colonel asked.

Fireblade and the second-most-senior teidar stepped forward, close to the ODSTs. Their gazes locked on the two enemies behind the bulkhead.

Even as Talon observed, the two signatures flickered, fading.

“They are neutralized for now, while we focus on them.” Tempo said.

Without their leader having to say anything, two of the ODSTs immediately dropped to the door crank and threw their weight into it.

Colonel Jardin immediately slipped through the hatchway as soon as there was room, his second-in-command reaching after him with one arm and a shouted warning.

The Colonel then flew backwards out of the doorway at speed, accompanied by a loud bang and bright flash.

Talon jumped aside as the human skidded across the floor to slam into the wall behind them.

“[Fucking mine!]” One of the ODSTs shouted, kneeling in the entrance and scanning his lights across the corridor beyond. “[I don’t see a second!]”

The human technician had another tool out, waving it before her as she gingerly stepped through. “[Looks like it was just the one. Big blast, though. Shaped charge.]”

Talon and Beryl sprinted over to Jardin and leaned over him as he slowly climbed to his feet, waving them back. “Shield took it. These bugs don’t kid around with the explosives, do they? You and they don’t even have shields.”

Tempo watched him as he walked back to the hatch, her arms crossed as the concern faded from her mind-signature. “By the size of the blast, that was likely a repurposed excavation or forced-entry charge. You are most fortunate to remain alive.”

The yellow-haired teidar sent <However the humans make these energy ‘shields,’ that would be a useful piece of equipment for the Union!> Her side-channels flicked through her thoughts on just what sort of tactical options such protection could open up.

“[Clear, sir!]” shouted one of the ODSTs from the next compartment. “[Two bugs secured.]”

The group followed through, two Shells pinned to the floor underneath four ODSTs each. Definitely overkill for the low-gravity aliens, on a world that was a bit heavy even for loroi preferences.

Talon eyed the blackened blast-mark etched into the floor near the entrance. No visible damage to the metal plating, only discoloration. And from a breaching charge?

Jardin waved Tempo forward as he stepped aside, speaking to his own warriors “[You can say one good thing about the Soia: they didn’t make aliens this ugly.]”

The mizol set to work.

<Interesting.> Beryl observed. <These are shipboard Umiak workers. Note the smaller size of the body, the lack of a thumb-spike, and thinner limbs. Not planetary laborers, and certainly not infantry soldiers.>

<That implies that the Hierarchy did not send specialized excavation workers.> noted Tempo, her side-channels flickering between her own thoughts and those relayed from the terrified alien under her hand. <Very interesting.>

After a few solon of concentration, she nodded and stood. The Shell she had interrogated twitched as a needle-precise telekinetic strike severed its spinal cord. The body slumped to the ground, mandibles tapping weakly against the floor for a few beats before stilling forever.

“Anything?” Asked Colonel Jardin.

Tempo shook her head. “These two were common laborers, sent to set charges throughout the ship. They do not know of any probe recovered, only the outline of the excavation of the vessel.”

“Do they know how their people found the ship in the first place?”

“Routine magnetic survey of the moon.”

The human’s eyebrows rose. “Either their sensors are very sensitive, or they must have been well within the atmosphere already to spot a ship this deep on magnetics.”

“The Enemy are known for their near-maniacal dedication to even the smallest detail. Surveying any system they control down to such a level would be expected for them.” Tempo responded as she briefly checked the second Shell. With a brief shake of her head, she sent it to join the first in oblivion.

“[Damn, that’s cold.]” commented one of the Helljumpers.

Colonel Jardin asked “Nothing more in that one?”

“No more than the first.”

“A pity.” The humans unceremoniously moved off to one side of the compartment and cranked open another hatch. This time, the recognizable walls of the transit corridor greeted them. “Nothing for it but to check on the probe launch systems. We’ll hike back to the tram, backtrack to the main route and follow that all the way forward to the bow.”

As the warriors piled aboard the cargo tram, Beryl asked “Is it common for human vessels to position the hangar bays at the front of vessels?”

“Hangars?” Jardin looked at her, frowning. Then his face cleared. “Ah, no. Message probes are launched from the main mass driver in the bow. Kicks them straight into slipspace.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

They eventually disembarked, went through another security checkpoint, and came to—

“This is a mass driver?” Beryl asked, looking up along the ancient metal tube overhead in the cavernous chamber which disappeared off into the shadows forward.

“Hmm?” Colonel Jardin looked up from the console he had re-powered. “Oh, yes.” He turned to his ODSTs. “[The firing logs are corrupted. Go look inside the barrels and see if there’s a probe sitting there.]”

Four of the human warriors set off, climbing the series of ladders up to the metal scaffolding which lined each colossal barrel far overhead.

“But they seem most large!” The listel continued, her side-channels counting her estimate of the size of the weapons before them.

One of the remaining ODSTs said in broken Trade, “Thirty-five mannals between sides. Largest in fleet at end of First War.”

Talon eyed the structures. That was the sort of weapon she’d want, going into a fight against an enemy who considered ‘moon’ to be a good size for a warship. After all, a target that large wasn’t going to dodge even something as slow as a mass driver round.

She needed a closer look.

She and Beryl each moved for the ladders at the same time, Talon holding back to let the listel go first. They reached the top just as the nearer team of two ODSTs began to crank open a massive metal plate in the side of the barrel. The four of them stepped through with flashlights in hand, playing the beams over the interior.

“[Nothing here, sir. Port-side MAC’s empty.]”

The other team added “[Starboard’s clear, too.]”

“[Any sign of a recent firing?]”

“[Can’t say I know what to look for, sir. But we’ve got our helmet cams rolling; we’ll see if the kid can poke through the footage later and spot anything.]”

<It seems empty to me.> Talon sent.

<Agreed.> Beryl added. <And I understood enough of the human warriors’ speech there to hear that they see the same.>

Sanzai faint with distance, Tempo replied <Good progress, listel. Return down here; we will likely leave soon.>

As the six warriors reached the bottom of the ladders, Colonel Jardin’s voice faded into earshot “So. We have a probe that may have been launched, may be in the hands — or claws — of the Bugs, and may be able to lead them to our refugee fleet. Assuming they can figure out how to get into slipspace, but if they have had Mandelbrot’s drive to examine...”

“It seems unlikely that such a probe would remain in a functional state after this large amount of time.” Tempo replied, gesturing with one hand to the MAC cannons overhead.

“Depends where it went. They’re pretty solid-state, so it would take a good while to decay enough that no data could be pulled. But yes, if it went into orbit around the system primary that would still be enough to have fried it long ago. But if it ended up buried into another planet, like this ship?”

“And if the Shells did recover it?”

“Well, assuming it’s got the same data as in Admiral Keyes’ last message, they’d have a pretty accurate idea of where to look for the refugee fleet. That’s a bit over a hundred Infinity-class transports, some armed… and either one or two fully-operational moon-ships. Depends if Equalizer and the Second Legion stayed behind as a rearguard or left with the fleet.”

With the group back together, Jardin led them towards the exit from the cavernous compartment, but not the one they’d entered through. “We’ll check the bridge, next, if it’s still in one piece. If any of the computers there survived, they might have more accurate navigational data.”

A cold shiver ran down Talon’s spine. The thought of the Shells finding an entire fleet of ancient warships, ready to look over… a thought struck her. “Would these ships still have survivors on them? In sleep aboard the stasis chambers?” The loroi hadn't known enough to guess, but presumably the human might.

“Can’t say for certain, but my money’s on ‘yes.’” replied the human leader. “UNSC stasis technology would not hold up for anywhere near this amount of time, but the fact that the passengers from Mandelbrot and Mobius were offloaded to 'somewhere' indicates that they decided to throw in with the rebel loroi aboard their moon-ships. And Soia stasis fields can easily hold for this long, especially if the ships were held in a stable slipspace pocket.”

Tempo asked “And how would they be likely to react to being ‘found’ by the Hierarchy?”

“That depends on just how much the Bugs know about them and how they choose to open things.” he said, leading the group down a stairwell behind the teidar and ODSTs. Talon glanced over the side and shone a hand-light down the central shaft.

The flashlight beam disappeared into the darkness, at least a hundred mannal below.

Colonel Jardin continued “Assuming that the rebel loroi did take aboard the humans of the refugee fleet, then we can take it for granted that if the Bugs decide to fight the Legions then the UNSC remnant will fight alongside the loroi. Not that I think they’d need the help — the Second Legion had been through the wringer in the withdrawal from Earth, but the Eleventh was near full-strength when they were pulled off the front lines.”

Beryl’s burning curiosity as to just how Soia-era loroi society had been structured glowed brighter than the hand-light in the listel’s grip. But her side-channels acknowledged that this was not the time to ask.

“And if the Enemy does not attempt to begin hostilities?” asked Tempo.

The human shrugged. “We’d never seen aliens like the Bugs before. If they play their cards right, the Legions and the UNSC might end up helping them. Play up your Union as 'Soia Remnants' or something like that.”

“These rebel loroi would aid a war against their own people?” Tempo asked, even as her side-channels radiated her lack of surprise.

“They’ve fought their sisters before.” Jardin said. “The only species that has only ever been on one side of the Wars has been Humanity.” In a nonchalant voice, he added “Pity we were on the losing end both times.”

The stairwell ended, leading into a short corridor and another armored doorway. The human penchant for excessive interior reinforcement of their ships was starting to become familiar to Talon. It was still borderline claustrophobia-inducing to walk through the narrow alien corridors compared to something more comfortably scaled, but she was learning to put up with it.

“[Hold up, sir.]” The human gallen raised one hand in a fist, waving her scanning device over the hatch even as one of her fellow warriors crouched by the manual-opening crank. “[Electrical activity on the other side of the door.]”

“[Map says through there should be the upper bridge maintenance access.]” Jardin said. “[The Bugs could have brought some of the computer systems online.]”

“[Might be, sir.]” the technician’s voice was doubtful. “[Readings are faint, but they would be for a system that old, vacuum or no.]”

“[Open it.]” Jardin instructed the ODST at the door controls.

Beryl sent <From what I could understand, it seems that this should lead to the ship’s command deck, and that the Shells may have already begun to search the ship’s electronics systems there.>

At that, the junior-most teidar walked over to stand behind the technician who knelt in front of the door. Watching in curiosity as the human warrior fiddled with the tool in her hands. “[Bit of a fluctuation in the readings, just—]” her voice sharpened, “[Shit! BOMB!]”

She threw herself aside, legs uncoiling like a spring.

Which left one junior teidar standing exposed in front of the still-opening door.

The ODST cranking the door pushed himself off from the wall, tackling the telekinetic warrior just as a gout of flame vented out of the open doorway. Slammed into them.

A bright energy field flared into being around the human. The two warriors skidded down the corridor, armor clattering off the floor tiles.

Talon flew aside under a telekinetic shove, the whole group scattering before the flames which poured from the hatch.

<Injuries?> Asked the lead teidar.

A wave of negative confirmations came back, tinged with pleased surprise in the case of one junior teidar.

With a pulse of her own telekinesis, the warrior pushed herself upright and aside. A solon later, and the ODST also floated to his feet, clearly startled at the movement.

Another human warrior immediately reached over and pulled him to the wall and out of the hot air. “[Good save, Chuck.]”

As the white-hot gases began to slow down in their venting, the human technician shouted to be heard “[That was a lot bigger than just some mine. Sir, I think they rigged the whole damn bridge to blow! I’m reading antiparticles in the blast mix; I doubt anything’s left of the computers!]”

“[Get in there as soon as it’s safe and see if anything can be salvaged.]” the Colonel’s voice was sharp enough that it could only be an order.

<The Shells seem to have destroyed the ship systems which we came here to find.> sent Beryl, disappointed. <Their gallen does not believe that anything may remain.>

<Unfortunate, but not surprising.> mused Tempo. <The Enemy would likely have recognized the compartment and realized its importance.>

The ODST technician stepped carefully through the still-glowing doorway, one arm raised protectively in front of her face. “[Jesus Christ, even the floor plating’s half-slagged.]” Around her, a faint energy field glowed where the last gasps of the superheated air streamed past the alien warrior.

None of the loroi moved to follow the humans inside, at least not just yet. Talon could feel the blistering heat radiating off of the visibly-warped floor and machinery even through her flight armor. The humans might be crazy enough to go inside right now, but they had energy shielding to protect them. She had only the insulation of her boots, probably made by some neridi lowest-bidd—

Metal groaned under the concentrated attention of three teidar, rising threads of thermal distortion fading as a narrow path of floor plating was thermokinetically forced to cool. Not quickly, but faster than it would otherwise.

Along the narrow route of tolerably-warm metal, the loroi party followed their human allies.

<I wish I could have seen it before it was destroyed.> Beryl sent, her head turning one way and another as she took in the obliterated compartment. <It is now hard to tell what machinery once existed here.> She paused, side-channels radiating confusion. <Although from what appear to be the remains of control consoles throughout the room, I cannot see the logic in their positioning.>

Tempo replied <You may yet have the opportunity to see such a craft undamaged.> She turned to eye Talon. <If our attempts to tie the humans closer to us have worked, then they will hopefully allow us to accompany them further on their next journey.>

<Next journey?> Talon asked, frowning slightly. After the Tinza fleet had secured this system, where would—

The realization hit her and Beryl at the same moment, judging by the listel’s side-channels.

But Tempo laid it out clearly anyways. <These humans had come to the Soia Ring in the first place in order to cover for their refugee fleet’s withdrawal. They had even even accepted that they would not return from that mission. And now that they are told that their refugees were not able to flee? There is only one place that the Colonel and his warriors will wish to go from here.>

Her side-channels highlighted Talon. <And judging by how well their pilot has worked with Beryl and you two tenoin, it is very likely that we will go with them. You have done very well at learning their ship-handling and ‘slipspace’ navigation.>

Talon pulled back her shoulders proudly, as she turned to look across the half-melted control consoles that had once lined the human warship’s bridge. <That is perhaps why their Colonel asked me to accompany this exploration, to look through the computer systems and see where it had traveled from.> Her side-channels admitted that he hadn’t specified between her and Spiral. She held one hand out above the ancient machinery, feeling the heat through the thermal lining of her palm. <Although I think that the chance to examine this ship’s systems may be gone.>

<That is perhaps his reasoning.> mused Tempo, watching the human warriors as they methodically checked one all-but-destroyed machine after another.

<What other cause could he have?> asked Talon, more interested than offended.

<I can imagine three. First, for your skills and knowledge in human navigation systems in addition to Beryl’s own experience observing the same. Second, so that his nephew and Spiral could be alone on the ship together; some conversations are easier between only two people.>

Talon smirked. Farm-girl certainly wouldn’t mind that reasoning.

Tempo continued <And three: So that there would be only one loroi warrior aboard the ship with his pilot in the event that he had to take actions which we might object to.>

The smirk fell of of Talon’s face. She spun to face the mizol, confusion spreading across her face. <Explain.> By the puzzled side-channels of the rest of the loroi, she wasn’t the only one who felt lost.

All except one: the lead teidar. Her mind-signature gave away nothing, as she stood like a statue by the entry hatchway.

<The Colonel knew only that the Enemy had access to his people’s artifacts.> The mizol explained. <He could have no way of knowing exactly how that came to be. What if it had been discovered that the human refugees had escaped the Soia long ago, and now some faction of them had returned to this sector of the galaxy with a base hidden under this moon’s surface... and were willingly trading with or even outright supporting the Hierarchy? If a senior military officer of his people had been present here and ordered him to abandon us on the surface, or even to fire on us?>

Talon’s blood chilled, and she stared at the mizol who so calmly described such a vile scenario.

The parat’s sub-channels showed no concern. <I did not think that that third possibility was likely; we do not know how capable their pilot would be in personal-scale fighting and it would have been simple enough instead for the Colonel to invent some excuse for having one of his ODST warriors remain behind.>

Picturing Alexfighting Spiral made Talon’s stomach clench.

Tempo turned her head to fix Talon with a calm gaze. <It was a risk worth taking. If we had refused his request, that would indicate a lack of trust and damage much of the rapport which we have carefully built over this last nanapi.>

Talon turned away, glaring at some rack of unrecognizable machinery slumped in a corner of the room. Just the idea that—!

She wrestled her thoughts aside. Warriors did not think in such ways, not about good allies that had fought alongside them already in several battles!

Some of what was on her mind must have leaked out, as Tempo sent <They have not been fully truthful with us. Several of their conversations and spoken explanations have been clearly… ‘altered’ or truncated to hide some piece of information which they do not want us to know.>

The mizol glanced aside to Beryl, who pursed her lips and added a few brief memories of different talks with the humans, showing where one or more of them had definitely been about to say something before changing their spoken sentence.

Talon balled her hand into a fist and only barely held herself back from slamming it against the console in front of her. The only thing that helped keep her stomach down was that it was Alex who had repeatedly been about to be fully open and honest with them — as a good warrior should — before his alien-mizol uncle ‘corrected’ him.

<Exactly.> Tempo sent.

Curse all mizol and their mind-prying!

With humor glowing behind her sanzai, the parat continued <He seems to be the youngest of the humans, and the friendliest towards us… and towards you three in particular. As these ten humans are pulled closer to us, eventually they will feel comfortable enough to tell us even those secrets which they have so far held back.>

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

SpoilerShow

And we've just nosed past the halfway-point in this fanfic, by page count. Some fun poking around in a crashed Infinity-class, and Tempo gets to outline the sneaky mizol-things that she's been thinking about. And RIP to Miranda Keyes; at least she got to wear Admiral's stars this time before meeting her end.

[Tamri]

Press "F" to all Keyeses. They was a great warriors.

[Urist]

<Really?> Talon asked, staring in surprise across the prowler’s control console at Spiral. <They eat that?>

Her diral-sister nodded.

Talon made a face. <That was not what I thought you two would have been discussing while we were down on the moon.> She let some of her mostly-joking suspicions about the Maia-born loroi leak into her side-channels.

Spiral laughed out loud, before quickly clamping one hand over her mouth and glancing back towards the rear of the cockpit, and the crew quarters down the corridor beyond.

<Don’t worry, I doubt even you were loud enough to wake him up from all the way up here.> Talon reassured. <Although with how tired he seemed when we returned to the ship, I did wonder just what you two had been doing...> Her friendly smile curled into a smirk. It was not often that she got to be the one teasing Spiral.

That earned her a muffled snort as Spiral shook her head. She indicated the sensor readout projected in front of her. <Not while there was still fighting in the system.> With a glance at Talon out of the twinkling corner of her eye, she added <Although that would have made for an exciting backdrop...>

Talon grinned back at her. <Seed-head.>

With a wink, Spiral continued <No, we simply spoke of our childhoods and training. Of the battles we had seen,> her sub-channels darkened <and the friends we had lost in battle.>

<A warriors’ discussion.> Talon sent, and Spiral nodded.

<Yes. It is amazing to me that he — and the rest of these human warriors — did not go crazy, fighting a war down to the very last of their species.> Her sub-channels emphasized how impressed she was with the accomplishment. <That is a feat of determination that any warrior would be proud of. I can only imagine how strong his mind must be.>

<Can only imagine?> asked Talon. <He did not show his thoughts to you directly?> The ODSTs had explained that they kept their lotai-machines active most of the time, to keep to their culture’s higher emphasis on privacy. But with only he and Spiral on board…

<No.> Her diral-sister pouted briefly. <He said that the human mind is much less ‘ordered’ than a loroi one, and that he didn’t want private thoughts leaking out.> Spiral’s own side-channels revealed just what sort of ‘thoughts’ she hoped he had been having.

For her part, a chill ran down Talon’s spine, thinking of what Tempo had told her aboard the crashed human warship. Was Alex afraid of revealing information which he had been ordered not to share with the loroi? With Spiral?

With Talon?

She squashed the brief spike of hurt that that had raised. Of course a good warrior would follow their orders, even if that clashed with their friendship with another warrior! It spoke well of Alex’s character that he could resist Spiral.

<But he will not resist us forever!> The Maiad just couldn’t help declaring, grinning broadly at Talon.

<No he will not.> agreed Talon, before she turned her attention back to the piloting display in front of where she sat. It did warm her heart that Alex had trusted them to fly the Did Ever Plummet Sound while he slept. Then again, it wasn’t like there was much to do during one of these slipspace flights, no matter how fascinating the actual mechanics may be.

And on that note… <Just under one-thousand solon until our next filament hop.> Talon sent, eyeing the piloting display in front of her.

Spiral checked her own screen. <And that should be our last one before arriving at the next system, a day later.> She paused for a beat or two. <What do you think this ‘Ran’ system will be like?>

Talon thought back to what Alex had said about their destination, as the prowler had left the Tinza fleet behind in the Ring system. <A former industrial center and military bastion? I imagine that the Soia were especially thorough in destroying it. And it’s not like anything visible would remain after nearly three-hundred-thousand years, anyways.>

Spiral sent back a non-verbal pulse of agreement, her sub-channels sorrowful. <From a planet that Alex said once held billions of people.>

A brief and surreptitious pulse of sanzai towards the rear of the ship confirmed that the lead teidar was safely asleep in her bunk. Talon sent <Worse than many Serens.>

<It seems strange that they then chose it as an arranged place for leaving long-term messages for other ships.> mused Spiral.

<Tempo explained that it may be instead that their Colonel wants to show us how bad the War was.> Not that Talon could really blame him, after his people had suffered through a war like that. Sorrow shared was sorrow lessened, after all. <But even she wasn’t sure just what would still be there to see. So it is possible that if any other human ships had left their refugee fleet, they would also have left a message in the decided place in that system.>

<That would be—> Spiral cut herself off, both tenoin turning to the door behind them just as Alex appeared.

Blinking sleep out of his eyes, the human nodded to each of them. “Mornin’.”

Talon frowned and glanced back at the display, checking the chronometer. “It seems that it is late evening.” At least, that was her reading of the strange, nineteen-cycle ‘day’ that the humans used. Was she wrong?

Alex stared at her for several solons, before breaking out into a chuckle. “I, uh, guess I walked right into that one.” He nodded to the screen. “How’re we doing?”

“One-thousand solon until we hop to the last filament, which should take us in to the Ran system within a day.” Talon said.

“Good. Oh and, uh,” he hiked one thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to grab breakfast. You two want anything?”

Spiral sent mirthfully <A male, bringing us food? Not how it usually goes, but I like where he is leading!>

<I… don’t think it necessarily has the same meaning for humans as it does for us.> Talon replied.

Her diral-sister sent back in exasperation <First he holds your hand, then he puts a blanket over you when you sleep, and now he brings you food? Are you waiting for a specific invitation, or just for him to pull you into bed with him?>

<Perhaps when we get some down-time later.> leaked out of Talon’s mind, before she could clamp down on her sanzai.

After a beat, Spiral’s happiness flowed over her. <Yes! That is the idea! You first, then me, and I am sure that that listel tozet wants to be afterwards.>

<She seems more ‘protective’ than anything. Not everyone thinks all the time of mating.> Talon sent, smiling despite herself. <You’re the only Maiad here, after all.>

<Then it is my duty to train you all!> Spiral shot back, along with an image of herself as a creche instructor, in the front of a classroom filled with the six other loroi of their small expedition.

Although the diagram on the board there would not have been considered appropriate, even on Maia. Probably.

While Talon was still recovering from that mental image, Spiral spoke aloud “It is most friendly to offer! I think it will be more fast for Talon to show you with herself!” To Talon, she sent <It is still many hundreds of solon until our next maneuver. You have enough time to go look through the food stores with him.> The narrat stretched as well as she could in her well-padded seat. <Also enough time to work your legs awake again.>

“Sure.” Alex said, raising one eyebrow at Talon.

After only a half-beat of thinking, she did rise from her pilot’s seat even as Spiral sent <I nearly forgot — grab a stuffed pozet for me, any filling!>

Talon gave her affirmation as the two of them filed out of the cockpit. Past the folded-up medical cots, and the still-closed door to the captain’s cabin. Then the open door to the armory, where one of the male ODSTs silently looked up at the two of them passing before returning to his work.

“[Evenin’, Doc.]” Alex said, as they entered the cramped crew quarters. “[Trying to figure out how to work that, uh… is that a comb or a can-opener?]”

At the table set in the middle of the bunk-lined compartment, the human doranzer sat with a half-deflated ration pack in front of him next to one of the human datapads. In one hand was a white Union fleet-pattern comb, which the human was spinning back and forth between one finger and thumb.

“[Both, I think. One of the elves gave it to me, the little one who got the shit shot out of her back on that Ring. Now that’s gratitude.]” He grinned up at Alex and pointed to the closed-off bunk capsules behind him. “[None of these jarheads get me fashion accessories when I seal their insides back in. I’ve already got enough extra stims and energy drinks to last me a lifetime.]”

Alex laughed, stepping into the room. As he passed the doranzer, he ran one hand along the nearly-shorn hair on the top of the human’s head. Strange for a warrior who was clearly very capable to keep their hair so short, but these were aliens. “[Can’t say I know what you’d do with a comb anyways, buzz-cut.]”

“[That’s ‘high-reg,’ thank you very much. Faster to clean the blood out of it after every mission.]” The doranzer looked up as Talon passed behind him. “[Hey, maybe your girlfriend would like to borrow the comb. Don’t think she’s ever seen one, by the looks of it.]”

Now both humans glanced back at Talon. What was she missing?

Alex shrugged. “[Hey, some things are universal. What’s the point of being a Navy pilot if you can’t lord your hair over the grunts in the mud down below?]”

With a bark of laughter, the doranzer turned to Alex. “[And her long hair gives you a nice handle to hold onto, right kid?]”

Alex’s face flushed bright red, and the ODST broke out laughing.

The language meant nothing to Talon, but she could recognize banter between friends when she heard it. And assuming that humans blushed for the same reasons as loroi did, maybe Alex had his own Spiral to deal with.

Leaning one shoulder against the wall at her side, Talon smiled a lopsided grin at Alex.

His blush only deepened.

Definitely a Spiral-worthy conversation he was having.

“[See, kid? She knows what’s up.]” The doranzer winked at Talon. “[You sure they don’t speak English?]”

A brief double-knock on one of the sleeping capsules came a solon before it opened. Another Helljumper, blinking sleep out of her eyes. “[Doc, is there a reason you are still up at this hour? At least flyboy here has to mind the ship.]”

“[Nah, I’m just reading through the files the elf doc gave me.]” The doranzer tapped at the datapad. “[It’s been a quarter-fucking-million years, I don’t want to find out the hard way that they’ve developed some new reaction to anything in my medkit.]”

“[Is there anything else in your kit besides biofoam and booze?]” The human female asked, smirking.

“[Hey, if neither one will make you better, you may as well pass on.]”

If only Beryl were awake. The listel would definitely enjoy listening in to the aliens speak, more practice for her growing understanding of their language. For her part, Talon just basked in the banter of warriors clearly friendly and familiar with each other. As stunted as it was by the limits of spoken speech, the pace and tone brought back fond memories of her own diral-sisters.

Still laughing, Alex said “[Any intel on which of the rations taste least-bad, by the way? I tried brown, and turns out that it’s genuine-imitation stroganoff.]”

The doranzer made a face. “[I knew they’d changed it! But no, orange is still ‘Thai surprise’ and I’m pretty sure green is supposed to be something Hispanic. Damn if I can tell just what, though.]”

“[Hey, my grandmother would kill whoever labeled those orange ones anything to do with Thai.]” The resting ODST called from her bunk.

“[Thanks, you two. Guess I may as well stick with brown.]” Alex waved for Talon to follow him as he knelt by one of the cabinet doors recessed into the bulkhead. “Well, Talon, I wish you better luck than me in finding something you like in here.”

She pulled two sealed pozet packets out of the half of the cabinet filled with loroi rations, and yanked on the wrapped cord to get the self-heating started. They’d be nice and warm by the time they got back to the cockpit. Talon turned to go, only to see Alex still fiddling with a machine he’d pulled out on an arm from the wall.

He glanced over at her, as a dark steaming liquid rushed into the cup he’d put into the machine. “Oh, uh, want a cup?”

“What is it?” She leaned closer. Her nose stung, either from the steam rising off of the liquid or from its sharp scent.

“Coffee. Uh, human stimulant drink.”

Perhaps something similar to noillir? “If it is safe, then certain.” These humans would know if it were unsafe for loroi to drink it. And in any case, there was a doranzer right there.

He held out the cup. “Careful, it’s hot. And for a night-shift watch, it’s black enough to put hair on your—” Alex cut himself off, frowning.

The doranzer snorted.

Talon tilted her head slightly to one side, thinking. There was a similar phrase… “Perhaps say ‘It is strong enough to grow your hair out’?”

“Yeah, let’s uh, go with that.”

Taking a careful sip, Talon was pleased to find it rather smooth. Like diluted noillir, if anything. “It is not bad.”

“[High praise for Navy coffee.]” Said the ODST from her bunk.

Alex pulled another cup from the cabinet next to the machine. “Keep the cup if you want. We’ve certainly got enough supplies for just the seven coffee-drinkers aboard.” As the machine hummed into life, Alex shot a grin at the doranzer.

Who responded “[Hey, we ran out of milk for that battery-acid you drink, even before our last mission. And I don’t think there’s so much as a single cow left in the universe, so that’s not going to change anytime soon.]” The human warrior tucked the comb away in one pocket and picked up his own ration-bag.

The Helljumper said from her bunk “[You know perfectly well that Navy-supplied cream has never even seen a cow, inside or outside.]”

“[Still takes the edge off.]”

The way that the three humans carried on their conversation alternating between Trade and their own language prompted a question from Talon. “Do all the humans in your team speak Trade?”

Alex paused, cup in hand halfway to his mouth. He glanced down at the doranzer.

“[Pretty sure your old man said that wasn’t exactly classified.]” The seated warrior then said in halting Trade “We speak not much well. Can understand if said to, but saying out loud is more difficult.”

Heh. Even worse than Spiral. She looked back at Alex, a question forming on her lips.

Apparently, the doranzer could understand what she was thinking. “Child and uncle speak with Tempest most common, learn to say very well.” Even with his clunky spoken Trade, the humor in his voice was evident “Child true grew up with second-mother saying in Trade.”

Talon turned her smile on Alex. “’Child’?”

He shook his head softly, stepping around the table on the other side from Talon and the doranzer. “I’m the youngest member of the Furies. Of course, compared to certain old timers,” he nodded with a smirk to the warrior who Talon was just now stepping past “anyone would look young.”

The two of them left the room, walking back into the corridor. Talon looked aside at Alex, thinking. He had been called ‘young,’ and while he was somewhat older than her that was still as nothing compared to how much worse fighting he must have seen.

How many battles had Alex seen, how many worlds evacuated?

Worlds destroyed?

Talon had seen ships blasted out of formation while on close-defense duty, and many times had come back from longer-ranged fighter patrols to a smaller Strikeforce than the one she’d left.

Had seen diral-sisters disappear forever, their fighter vanishing in an eye-searing blast of Shell point-defense plasma, or a missile strike, or a thousand other things.

It was one of the things that all loroi in the Union had come to learn, these past twenty-five year: that it was proper and honorable to be a warrior, yes, but that war itself… was nobody’s gain. Not wars like this one, between the Union and the Hierarchy. A war where no prisoners were accepted, no ground was ceded except as cratered desolation, no warriors gained renown by their deeds on the battlefield.

Or at least, none seemed to achieve anything of note by those deeds. Emperor Eighth Dawn throws her own squadron into the line to attempt to stem the Shell offensives battering down the walls of the home sectors… and only finds her own death.

Years later, Sunfury gives the Tithric their just desserts and pushes the enemy lines back for the first time in the War. Her reward? Being cut off and surrounded, her entire fleet cut down to the last warrior. The war only ground on.

And even Stillstorm, the most famous remaining commander in the Union. What had she earned, for twenty-five years of grueling service directly on the front lines? More than a decade of stalemate, entire generations of loroi being fed into the meat-pulper of the Charred Steps.

Nothing gained.

What was the purpose of fame and martial glory, if the warrior who earned it gained nothing for her people, for her Union?

Only with this latest discovery of the humans was there even a chance of seeing this war end, it seemed to Talon.

“Talon?” Alex’s voice was low.

She blinked, turning aside to meet his worried eyes.

And only then realized that she had all-but-crushed one of the stuffed pozet in her clenched hand. She’d give the undamaged one to Spiral, then.

She forced a smile. “It is fine.”

“...If you say so.” Alex held his words until they were several mannals away from the crew-quarters compartment before murmuring “Are you okay?”

She glanced across at him. Was he okay? She knew well enough how oppressive the stresses of war could be. Every loroi knew that. Well, every warrior loroi, the ones that mattered.

And she also knew just how much it helped to be able to share that burden with one’s closest friends, fellow warriors. To reassure them that all here sailed the same boat, that they were not alone.

But Spiral had been right — all humans were alone.

And yet he clearly was doing his best to be a friend to Talon, and to Spiral, and to Beryl. Even though he could not know them, could not feel them, not in the way that really mattered.

How could Alex stand it?

Talon carefully transferred the mashed pozet to the other hand, the one that carefully balanced now two wrapped rations and one ‘coffee.’ The other hand reached up, hesitating briefly before grasping onto Alex’s shoulder.

She’d seen the gesture between two of the other humans, earlier. It seemed to be a sign of warriorly affection.

Alex’s eyebrows rose, and he opened his mouth to say something.

Stopped himself.

Then his own hand climbed to rest atop Talon’s own.

Warm

The two of them smiled gently at each other.

Spiral was right: the next down-time could not come soon enough.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Emerging to system will be in thirty solon!” announced Spiral.

“Noted.” said Alex, from the pilot’s seat.

For her part, Talon let her sanzai convey her distracted acknowledgment. She was instead still busy calculating the arrival vector. The human charts of the system had been accurate...

Nearly three-hundred-thousand years ago.

Alex had assured her that the jump into the system would still be well within the tolerances of the Did Ever Plummet Sound’s slipspace core. But at the same time, with their ever-increasing proximity to the system had come the chance to see if it would be possible to calculate a better arrival vector just by using the observations from their slipspace sensors.

It had been a very enjoyable twelve cycles working on that, Alex supplying humanity’s known tricks about navigating slipspace while Talon contrasted that with what the Union knew about hyper jumps.

But there would be only one way to know just how accurate those calculations would be, and that was comparing them to the actual in-system data after the jump.

“Five solon! Four, three, two, one...” Spiral counted down.

The prowler rumbled around them, and the cockpit windows ahead shifted back to the starry field of realspace.

“Smoother every time.” Alex noted. He leaned over, clapping Talon on the back. “Good navigating.”

“I think I now am understanding better how to—”

Talon’s response was interrupted by Spiral shouting “Sensor contacts! Many ships!” Even as Alex brought up a small sensor repeat onto his screen, she added “It is the Shells!”

The narrat’s sanzai alert brought Beryl to the bridge, leaning over Spiral’s shoulder. “It is two divisions, spread around throughout the system. They seem to be… searching.”

Colonel Jardin’s low voice sounded from the open doorway “Then that answers our question. They pulled navigational data from somewhere, either the probe or the Mandelbrot.”

“But they must have left a very much long time previous, being here already!” said Spiral. “This distance must be taking more than a tozon to reach, from as distant as their Shell homes.”

Which said something rather unsettling about just how long the Enemy had known about the crashed human ship and the Soia Ring. Without having humans there to help them — Tempo’s imagined scenario from before flashed through her mind — it must have taken a long time for the Shells to find navigational coordinates from the human records.

Had the Shells found the Ring system years earlier? How much more had they gleaned from studying the wreck and artifacts found there?

“And if the Fleet’s still in slipspace,” said the Colonel, “then the Bugs aren’t going to find anything at the end of the rainbow, anyways. Doesn’t mean I want them picking over our old colonies, though.”

A cold line traced its way down Talon’s back. How certain could one be, now, that the Shells didn’t have any way of reaching into slipspace? The human Admiral’s recorded message had mentioned them sailing with at least one other ship… of which there was no current trace. Had the Shells found this ‘UNSC Mobius’? What could they have learned from a recovered slipspace drive, in over a year of study?

“Anyways,” continued the senior Jardin as he leaned in over his nephew to tap a brief series of commands into the console “put us on a course for this moon, above the fourth planet. However the Bugs came to be here, they don’t seem to know where the drop-off point is.”

Alex asked “Old ONI base?”

“From the Insurrection era, yes.”

“I see.” Then Alex pointed with one hand towards the three asteroid belts clearly visible in the system and said with a smile in his voice “And, of course…?” he held out one hand.

With a sigh, Colonel Jardin reached into a pouch at his waist and drew out a small, palm-sized plastic-wrapped item. He handed it over to Alex, even as he shot a thin smile at Talon. “Trust my nephew to remember a bet a quarter-million years old.”

Talon looked over quizzically. Alex winked at her with a chuckle, “There’s three belts, which means I win the last chocolate bar in existence.”

Talon was still forming her thoughts into a prepared vocal sentence — sanzai was so much easier — when Beryl beat her to speaking “It seems that there is some significance of the three asteroid belts in this system? Was that not the count when you last surveyed the area?”

Carefully tucking the ‘chocolate bar’ item into a shirt pocket, Alex pointed with his other hand to the innermost asteroid cluster. “Only the two outer belts are ‘natural.’ That innermost one? That is what’s left of Surveyor.”

Talon’s eyes flicked back and forth across the sensor readings, the back of her mind tallying up the mass it represented. “A Soia dreadstar?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Alex made a strange noise, but nodded.

Colonel Jardin intoned “Never send an Architect to do a Warrior’s work.”

Talon and Beryl exchanged a glance, eyebrows raised. Before either of the loroi could vocalize the thoughts on their minds, Alex explained “A few years after Tempest’s Rebellion, the Empire had stabilized things enough to go back on the offensive. They put their Councilor for Grand Architecture in charge of the war effort… and she decided that what the Empire needed was a, uh, ‘grand victory’ to shore up morale, and that she’d prove her competency by overseeing it personally.”

The Colonel picked up “So she took three moon-ships under her personal command and went straight for the biggest military target that they were aware of: Reach.” He pointed to the innermost planet. “She found a fight, all right. Six months of grinding their way in through the outer system defenses saw the moon-ship Desolator crippled enough by Reach’s orbital defenses to force it to withdraw and limp home. That was a big blow — those things took time to repair." He laughed darkly. "I’d wager it was still in yard hands when the War ended.”

“Anyways,” Alex smoothly continued “she apparently decided that this whole operation was becoming something of an, uh, embarrassment. The S-MAC platforms over Reach were chewing through the smallships deployed from her remaining two moonships and were even getting a lucky few hits in on the big ones when they strayed too far in-system.”

His uncle said “So she did what any inexperienced military commander would do: she gambled everything on a pinpoint jump right into Reach’s close orbit with her entire force.” He sighed and shook his head. “Crippled the S-MACs, sure, but it brought two moon-ships into boarding range.”

Talon blinked in shock. “Boarding range?” She thought of the stories she had heard as a child about the Soia, of the ‘city-sized’ or ‘moon-sized’ — depending on the record — dreadstars that had dominated known space. Even the fragment of one that she herself had seen, earlier, was colossal, many thousands of mannals across.

Just how did one go about ‘boarding’ a ship like that, prepared for combat?

Alex explained “It’s not like we captured the ships or anything. A team of Spar— uh, special forces infiltrated aboard the second moonship, and brought a NOVA bomb along with them.”

Talon wouldn’t have caught the slight change in wording of his speech if Tempo’s earlier warning hadn’t had her alert for it. The humans definitely were concealing something. Even Alex.

“It seems that these ‘special forces’ of yours must have been very skilled warriors.” Beryl observed, her side-channels making it clear that she had noticed the same slip as had Talon.

“They were.” Alex said.

With a low chuckle, his uncle added “As good as Helljumpers, I’ll give them that.”

Alex snorted, and continued “Anyways, they set off the bomb inside the ship. The blast vaporized the vessel, and slammed Surveyor next to her into the moon Turul. Both of them broke apart on impact, but the debris cloud was still spreading when we were forced out of the system a year later.” He craned his neck back, smirking up at his uncle. “There had been some, uh, debate at the time if they’d end up deorbiting, or forming a ring around Reach, or forming a ring around the system primary.”

“And someone guessed right.” Colonel Jardin said.

“A ‘guess’ had nothing to do with it. I calculated.” Alex corrected his uncle, smirking.

Meanwhile, Talon’s mind was still struggling to picture two Soia dreadstars being destroyed in a single stroke. “How wide were these Soia craft?” She asked, feeling Beryl’s attention focus its laser-like intensity.

“Bit under four hundred klicks across, so that would be, uh… five-hundred-thousand mannal?” Alex said. “They varied a good bit; it’s not like the Soia were turning these things out on assembly lines. Each one was custom-built by whichever Architect was overseeing its construction. Surveyor was one of the biggest — Tempest says that Architecture always loved to over-build her pet projects — but the more common small ones went down to fifty klicks across, so sixty-five-thousand mannal.”

The three loroi in the cockpit exchanged mutual feelings of horrified awe at the idea of warships at such a scale. Talon tried to mentally picture just how unreasonably large even a sixty-five-thousand mannal ship would be. If she wasn’t mistaken—

Unsurprisingly, Beryl beat her to the calculations. <Even one of those ‘small’ dreadstars could have had more internal volume than the combined Union fleet.> Her sub-channels showed more curiosity than anything else.

Did Ever Plummet Sound drew closer to the moon that Colonel Jardin had indicated.

As if he could receive her sanzai, Alex spoke aloud “They were more city than warship, keep in mind. Pretty light armament. Uh, for their size, anyways. The Soia had learned — well, Tempest had learned — decades earlier not to bring them any farther in a system than was necessary to drop off their smallships.”

“[I’ll leave the conversation to you.]” The elder Jardin spoke aside to his nephew, “Land us on the surface at the coordinates I gave you. I’ll step outside — it should only take a few minutes to check the message box, but it does require proximity.” He stepped out of the cockpit.

While the prowler dove into the airless moon’s gravity well, Spiral noted from her sensor station “One of those Shell frigates may soon be coming much close to us.”

Alex reached one finger up to tap against a set of indicator lights above his station. “We’re in full stealth. They’d have to be very close by to notice anything, especially once we shut down the engines and deploy the adaptive netting.” He glanced back at Spiral. “How nearby will that craft get?”

“It seems to be making maps above the moons of this planet.” the narrat responded. “It is flying maybe two-hundred-thousand mannal above the surfaces. Perhaps it will be that close within three thousand solon.”

“Hundred-fifty klicks, then, at closest.” Alex said lowly, to himself. How strange it must be for aliens, to form their own thoughts by speaking aloud to themselves! He returned to a normal voice “That should be far enough to be safe. Besides, Uncle should be done with his contact by then.”

The prowler gently landed, the muted rumble of its ventral thrusters fading away. With her now-greater familiarity with the alien ship, Talon recognized the series of thuds and clunks echoing distantly through the hull to be the boarding ramp lowering.

Talon made a show of stretching casually in her seat — all the better to reassure Alex that she trusted his judgment — although she kept one eye on the display repeater that showed the slowly-approaching Shell ship. The mechanisms that kept the human craft hidden from the Enemy’s detection systems were not yet familiar to her, so she certainly did not entirely trust them.

For a few solon, only silence filled the cockpit.

Then a thought struck her. “Alex, is it normal for a UNSC messaging location to have to be physically accessed? I think maybe it would be safer to communicate to it from orbit.”

The pilot shook his head. “We got no response on the tight-beam on the way in; the transceivers must have been buried long ago.” He returned to checking the indicators at his station, muttering to himself. “[Baffles are cold, nets are out, thermal pipes… may as well dig them down while we wait.]”

“That seems to make sense.” Talon nodded.

More silence, this time eventually broken by Alex. “Talon, you said a while ago that you and Spiral were in a, uh, ‘gang.’ What’s the story with that?”

Talon thought she saw what he was asking, with his strange twisting of spoken Trade. “It is the childhood training of all loroi warriors. Older children are grouped in diral, and sent into the wilds to perform tasks and challenges to prove their worth as warriors. We on Taben were in a diral fifty strong; I say the best diral on the planet, then!”

Spiral proudly added “The ‘High Tide Low-lives’ were we!”

“Uh-huh.” Alex said, smiling. “Any fun stories from your Lord of the Flies experience?” Talon tilted her head at him quizzically, and he waved one hand. “An ancient story of human children growing up alone on an island at sea. They mostly fight each other.”

Talon nodded, slowly. “Then that is perhaps much like two tenoin diral meeting.”

“We beated both fights!” Spiral boasted, grinning widely at the memories leaking through her parallel sanzai. “Other dirals had to go fishing again; we ate their caught leviathan!”

And if anything could make the tough muscle or fatty blubber of a Tabenid Leviathan taste delicious, it was winning that meat in a fight. Talon could still remember that meal. It had tasted like… victory.

“Right, so… pirates.” Alex’s smile had grown into a warm smirk. He nodded his head at Spiral. “We definitely need to get you an eyepatch, now. Don’t know where we’re going to find a parrot these days, though.”

“Eyepatch and ‘parrot’?” asked Spiral.

“The traditional, uh, ‘uniform’ of pirates in human literature. Mostly cinema, now that I think about it.”

Talon’s eyebrows rose. The humans must have an admirable warrior history indeed, if even pirates had uniforms! “I think maybe ‘pirate’ is perhaps not the most correct word. Diral are supposed to fight each other, but also not to kill each other. I know that at least one of the other diral we beat still passed their graduation, afterwards.”

<I guess the Fleet does need garrison troops.> Spiral admitted, condescendingly. <They were not exactly the finest of warriors. Those other tenoin barely knew how to set their sails! What happens if they meet the Shells?>

Talon confidently answered <Shells don’t sail.>

Alex laughed “Right, ‘friendly’ pirates, then. Any other fun stories?” He glanced at the display, showing the Enemy warship still some time away from their moon.

This time, Spiral answered “Yes! There is the graduation with the missing anchor!”

<Not that story!> Talon sent with a mental groan. All had turned out well — except for Talon — but it wasn’t her proudest moment.

<Yes that story!> replied her diral-sister. “On the night before our graduating time, we sailed into the bay where we would be graduated… but without an anchor!” She held up one finger for dramatic emphasis.

Talon interjected “I think maybe I should be explaining this. Spiral has not very good spoken Trade, and might mistake the story.”

The narrat in question stuck her tongue out at Talon. <Or I might tell him the full story!>

<Most of which only occurred in your seed-filled head.> Talon sent. “The entire diral would be judged by the condition of our ship. It seemed to me that we were at risk of failing exactly as we were about to graduate.”

“So Plunger stole an anchor!” said Spiral.

“Was that allowed?” asked Alex, one eyebrow raised.

“Diral girls are supposed to ‘find’ what materials they need, either taken from nature or from civilians.” Talon shrugged. At the human’s surprised face, she quickly added “The civilians are compensated by the tenoin caste authorities for any objects taken. And we do not put them in danger, only take… ‘necessities.’”

“But an anchor? Isn’t that, uh, important for boats?”

“All ships were in a protected cove, not in storm season, and the tide would not be pulling the other ship out to sea until many cycles after our graduation ceremony was to be done.” Talon side-eyed Spiral. “And I was planning to put it back afterwards, all along.”

“But the most great part is whose ship Plunger took the anchor from!”

“Oh?” Alex’s eyes glinted playfully in the reflected light from his display. “Don’t tell me you robbed the instructor’s boat, or something.”

“More better still!” Spiral said. “It was a ship of—”

Talon interjected first, to set the facts straight. “It did not have any flag or label that we had been taught, and did not wear the banner of a warrior’s ship. So it was a fair target by our instructions.” Despite herself, Talon’s lips broke into a thin smile. With now several years comfortably in between herself and the incident, she could admit that it was funny.

She continued “And so at night, while the rest of the diral rowed the ship to keep it in place and not pushed ashore, I went along the seafloor to this other ship and took their anchor. Attached it to our anchor-chain, and swam up back to our ship.”

“But a whole anchor?” Alex asked. “That seems, uh, heavy.”

“It was. But I was strong enough.” Talon nodded, pulling her shoulders back and flexing slightly. “And as the one with the best head for navigation while blind, it was my duty to do that work.”

“And so in the morning we stood in lines for our graduating event, in front of ship ‘mysteriously’ washed ashore!” Spiral said.

“Bet they didn’t like that.” Alex snorted.

“It seemed that they did not trust the currents for their safety, and deliberately moved their ship onto the shore.” Talon said with a shrug. “They would have been safe where they floated, but that was their choice.”

“So,” Alex apparently could tell the question that she had been not quite answering, “whose boat was it?”

“It seemed that it belonged to the three nilodi caste members that were to be recording our graduation.” Talon explained, a brief laugh escaping her lips. When Alex looked nonplussed, she continued “The Nilodi are Taben’s own non-combat caste closest to the listels. They observe and record sanzai conversations that do not involve being near any risk of battle.”

Taben might be the junior partner of the three Sister Worlds, but at least most of their own traditions had been preserved. The Tenoin remained their own caste apart from the Soroin, and the Nilodi remained separate from the Nedatan. And a good thing, too — the nilodi lived their lives as a good Tabenid should: out at sea, not crammed into some shore-bound monastery. Taben was proud of her sons, the finest males in the Union!

“Huh. What determines who gets sent to the, uh, ‘nilodi’ versus the ‘listel’?” Alex asked, his attention focused on Talon so that he missed the way that Spiral’s grin exploded. He muttered to himself in his own language “[‘Preserver’ caste.]”

The narrat said with a grin “Because the nilodi are males!” Her sanzai appended the memory of an admittedly very cute nilodi male flanked by his two scowling caretaker warriors… and all three of them with their caste’s clothing soaked up to their waist. Halfway up the male’s chest, for that matter. “This one and caretakers had to wade ashore!”

“They could have just waited for the morning tide to recede.” Talon repeated the gripe that she’d explained to her own caste reviewer. That Tenoin Seinen had seemed so intimidating at the time with her sanzai so brusque and clipped, but looking back on it now Talon was pretty sure that she had actually been holding back her own laughter at the event. “They did not have to swim.”

“It did not make the senior caretaker very happy for her ship to stop doing ship-things. And then she saw ‘our’ anchor when our ship was pulled up onto the shore!” Spiral said.

“Most fortunate for us, it seemed that the nilodi male himself was more only amused by things.” Talon said. “He was kind and talked his caretaker into not being quite so tough against us.” She quirked her lip. “Well, not against the rest of the diral. I had to spend my first night after graduating re-attaching the anchor to his ship.” And it had been hard enough getting it off of the chain in the first place; replacing all of the attachment parts in the dark had been an even greater challenge.

<And were denied your encounter opportunity.> Spiral grumbled, <Your official opportunity. But I still say that Evening Fog was hoping you’d swim up and ‘encounter’ him on his ship. He did specifically say that both of his caretakers were heavy sleepers...>

In her well-worn side of the old argument, Talon pointed out <On a ship that small? They’d have to have been in a coma to not overhear anything fun. It wasn’t worth the risk, not without an official agreement from his caretaker.>

And even with her diral officially graduated, Talon hadn’t wanted to inflame the caretaker’s anger even more by asking for an encounter with the male under her protection. Even if he could have used some help getting warm after his dip in the cold waters...

Alex grinned broadly. “Now that’s a story worthy of a pilot!”

“And what are your stories of training graduation?” asked Spiral.

“Well, you’ve already heard how I, uh, ‘earned’ my callsign.”

“Yes, I remember the exploding-fuel shuttle.” Talon smiled warmly.

“Heh. Well, I’m afraid that my actual formal ‘graduation’ wasn’t as fun as yours.” His face fell. “We just got an hour-long lecture from the training squadron leader, and then we boarded shuttles to our line units. Of course, that was on Holdout just as the Soia were fighting their way into the outer system, so we were kinda, uh, pressed for time.”

Talon’s own smile disappeared as well. Her diral graduation certainly would have gone differently if the Shells had been actively fighting in the same system as Taben at that time. Would there even have been a graduation ceremony?

Either way, she definitely would have taken up Evening Fog on his none-too-subtle offer.

Alex continued, in a very distant voice. Apparently speaking to himself again. “A quarter of the graduating class were dead within the week.”

Talon made her choice. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing in the face of the sheer hurt transmitted through his voice — no sanzai necessary — whether coming from a warrior or a male. Or in this case, a warrior-male.

She leaned over the controls, resting one hand on the back of Alex’s warm neck, fingers tracing along his spine and the bottom fringe of his hair. Since he couldn’t hear her sanzai even with that contact, she tried to put it into words “But they won, in the end. The Soia were defeated. A warrior cannot ask for more.”

Spiral mirrored Talon’s gesture from Alex’s other side.

He smiled faintly, glancing between the tenoin. “Thanks, you two.”

Spiral said, slowly “Your friends from the squadron, they also still live in memories that you have of them. Perhaps it is good to tell stories you know of them?”

“Hm. When you put it that way...” Alex’s smile warmed, almost back to as bright as it had been earlier.

As bright as Talon liked to see it.

“So, uh, there was Michael. Mike was a transfer from...” Alex began.

Listening to the human recount his stories, Talon adjusted her seat slightly, to sit comfortably with her hand still resting on Alex’s back.

As a gesture of support to a fellow warrior, of course.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

<Teidar pallan, please meet me in the captain’s cabin.> Tempo sent.

Fireblade opened her eyes and sat up from her bed in the crew quarters. It had taken some time to get used to sleeping in proximity to the aliens, but after these several past fights against the Shells she figured that the humans could be trusted. <I am on my way, mizol parat.>

She rolled out of the bed, feet thumping softly onto the floor plating. The sleeping alcove below hers was empty — Beryl was up, most likely already present at the same meeting that Tempo’s side-channels had promised. <Has the Colonel returned from his mission?> she asked.

<He has. And the information he has found is… interesting. You will wish to see it personally.> The mizol’s side-channels hinted at some of the findings, but not with enough detail for Fireblade to make sense of them.

With a nod at one of the human warriors seated at the table in the middle of the room, Fireblade left the sleeping compartment. She paused briefly outside of the door to the captain’s cabin, listening to the faint vocal speech that could be heard through the open door to the cockpit.

Good. It sounded like the two tenoin were proceeding well with their mission of forming a closer bond with the human pilot.

With a lurch, the ship lifted off of the moon and shot skywards. Fireblade shot a hand out to grab the door frame for support, and then squeezed into the cabin.

“—kes sense. They’d hardly have sat on their thumbs all this time.” The Colonel shrugged.

Tempo crossed her arms. “But three-hundred-thousand years? And they have not yet found success?”

“Hey, slipspace is hard. Especially now after whatever the Soia did to it. I’m not sure how many of our eggheads ever really understood it, but I do know that few among the rebel loroi ever did. They just ran the ships and machines, same as most of us did.”

<What is the summary of the situation?> Fireblade asked, standing behind Beryl and watching the mizol and the Colonel talk.

Beryl sent <It seems that the humans possess a message system which is capable of receiving messages from slipspace while being present here in realspace. He says that it is derived from what he called a ‘slipspace com,’ but I am uncertain if this is another of the ‘acronyms’ that the human language is fond of.>

<Interesting.> Fireblade allowed her sub-channels to reveal how little the finding actually meant to her, for all that Beryl obviously found it fascinating. <And did he find any messages?>

<Yes!> Beryl answered, her side-channels flickering through the details. <It is most amazing! He has discovered that there have been over a hundred recorded visits of human vessels to this moon since the end of the Soia Wars, approximately every few thousand years.>

Fireblade’s eyebrows raced upwards. <The humans have been active in the galaxy for all this time!?> Then what had they been doing?

<Not in the galaxy itself, not really.> Beryl sent, her sub-channels grim. <It seems that the Soia’s Ring weapon destabilized the slipspace ‘boundary’ enough that no human vessel from the refugee fleet was able to successfully transit back to realspace.>

That fit what the human ‘admiral’ had said in the message recovered from aboard Mandelbrot. Yet— <But that ship of theirs crashed onto the moon. So they can manage it, if they avoid gravity wells.>

<I am not so certain that they know that. From our experience departing slipspace when reuniting with the Tinza fleet, it appears that human slipspace engines are much more vulnerable to being drawn towards large masses than are our own jump drives. It also seems that the probe which the human admiral was going to send upon entering realspace did not make it back to the refugee fleet; their messages found here afterwards list that ship as ‘disappeared.’>

Tempo’s eyes briefly flickered over to Fireblade. <Then that gives us some very valuable information to bring to them.>

<You think that we can find their fleet? Did the Colonel not say that they were attempting not to be found?> Fireblade’s own memory of exactly what the human leader had said so many days ago was imprecise, but Beryl immediately supplied the exact quote.

The mizol did not answer, in favor of speaking aloud “And what was the most recent attempt?”

Colonel Jardin looked down at the datapad in his hand. “Bit over seven-hundred years ago, they dispatched a frigate and volunteer crew to attempt a re-entry through a slipspace ‘tunnel’ one of their earlier ships had detected. That’s, ah, usually left by a major point-mass; a neutron star or a black hole, something like that.”

“Are such gravity wells not usually avoided by craft attempting faster-than-light travel?” Tempo asked.

The Colonel opened his mouth to answer, but Beryl spoke quickly, her sub-channels radiating shock and surprise. “Did those records say where in the galaxy this slipspace tunnel was located?”

Tempo and Fireblade both sent a sub-verbal question to the listel.

Beryl explained, her side-channels a hurried rush of thoughts and calculations <We know from the Soia’s Ring weapon that changes can be made to the ‘nature’ of slipspace-realspace interaction across a very large area, and that this interferes with the ability to travel faster-than-light. Human years are longer than Union standard ones, so seven-hundred human years would be approximately one-thousand years ago for us. Near the end of the First Mannadi War.>

Fireblade made the realization a split-solon before Tempo. <Which ended because of the mass disruption of jump drive travel.>

Tempo added <And was believed to be emanating from the Well of Souls. The black hole.>

“Ah, here.” Colonel Jardin flipped the datapad around and held it out to the listel. “Doubt the thread patterns have changed that much in seven-hundred years, so it should still be accurate enough.”

Beryl took the pad, staring down at its screen. Fireblade leaned over her shoulder to watch, letting the superimposed images from the tozet’s side-channels fill in the details.

<It is the Well of Souls!> Beryl exclaimed, after several solons. <There are no other known stellar-scale masses in that region which could possibly be it!>

Tempo flashed a brief burst of amusement. <Perhaps the Mannadi owe the humans a small debt, for stalling our pacification of their people.>

Fireblade snorted. That was one way to phrase it. <Not that it helped them in the long run.>

<It was their choice to continue the aggression that would lead to the Second and Third wars against them.> Tempo shrugged.

Beryl spoke aloud “This is amazing! It is almost certain that your frigate attempted to re-enter realspace near the black hole known as the ‘Well of Souls.’ We have many records of gravitational disturbances throughout known space around the time when you say that the frigate made its journey.”

“Well. Guess they must have slammed hard into it or something, because the Grafton was never seen again according to the log from the next ship after her.”

Beryl handed the pad back to the human. “It does seem that perhaps human craft are more affected by gravity wells than are loroi jump drives.”

“Either way, I’m glad that you and your pilots worked out a solution with Alex.” the Colonel said. “And if we can find the refugee fleet where they’re hiding...”

<Then this expedition becomes very interesting.> sent Tempo. Aloud, she asked “You believe that this is possible?”

Colonel Jardin nodded to Beryl. “That’s up to your science officer here, and the three pilots. The exact access corridor to the slipspace pocket where the fleet’s no doubt sitting has been excised from each of the visitation records. Guess they’re still paranoid about the Soia being out there, somewhere. I don’t know enough myself about slipspace to say exactly how hard it’ll be to find them starting from a rough area, but I think it’s possible.”

<That… may be true.> the listel sent. <It seems that there is some correlation between the pattern of slipspace threads versus stellar mass distributions. If one compared the slipspace sensor readings from a ship such as this prowler to established star-charts...> her sub-channels fell. <But we are already so deep into the Great Wasteland, I doubt that our existing charts will be accurate enough.>

<A pity.> sent Tempo. <Then it is unlikely that we can forge contact with them before the end of the War. Sending a surveying expedition this far from Union space is not going to happen during wartime.> Implicit in her side-channels was the assumption that there would still be a Union, after the war.

Well, if there wasn’t, then at least Fireblade wouldn’t be around to care. And on that thought… <Should we encourage them to continue their search for their missing fleet, or should we push them towards returning to Union space?> she asked.

The human prowler and its eleven-alien crew would certainly go quite some ways towards ensuring a Loroi victory in the War; they could search afterwards. On the other hand, if the human & rebel-loroi fleet could be found…

It was an equally military and diplomatic decision, assuming even that they could influence the humans one way or the other.

Tempo nodded to Fireblade, acknowledging that point conveyed by the teidar’s side-channels. <It is my recommendation as the expedition’s diplomatic officer that we attempt to locate their refugee fleet. If we spend more than two entire transits searching without result, then we should re-evaluate. Your thoughts?>

Fireblade pinged Beryl before responding herself. Of the three of them, the listel was the one with at least some understanding of how the humans’ slipspace navigation worked.

Beryl sent <I believe that that would be enough time to determine our odds of success accurately.>

Fireblade turned back to Tempo. <Then we are in agreement. Two transits.>

They turned as one to Colonel Jardin, whose eyes flicked between the three of them. “Well, what do you ladies think?”

“We believe that it is worth attempting.” said Tempo. “It can be assumed that your nephew is already navigating us towards the approximate location of this refugee fleet?”

“Dusted off as soon as I got back aboard.” he responded. “He says we should be there within a week.”

Fireblade mentally translated the human term, and then nodded. Less than a single transit.

“Then it seems that we are faced only with the issue of the Hierarchy’s presence in this system.” Tempo said.

He snorted. “Doubt we could do much about them, and they’re welcome to pick over anything they can find. I’ve left a little, ah, surprise for them at the drop point, even assuming they ever find it.”

“Would that not harm the group efforts of your fleet’s scouts during their next search?”

“Hardly. Just lets them know there was somebody in the neighborhood, snooping around. And if the Bugs don’t find it, then the next UNSC ship to drop by will pick up the message I left for them.” He shrugged. “Doubt it’ll matter if their next ship only comes by in a few thousand years, but the idea’s there.”

It was disconcerting, to think in terms of millennia. To know that even while the Soia wreckage on each of the three Sister Worlds was still warm, human ships had been searching the galaxy for a way out of their slipspace prison.

Like sailors hammering on the inside hull of their capsized ship, hoping to break free.

[Snoofman]

I loved the story bit of Talon's and Spiral's diral stealing the anchor. That explains why Talon lost her chance to mate.

I also am anxious to see the Loroi's reactions when they finally learn about the Spar- <ahem> 'special forces'.

Imagine how frustrating it must be for a whole crew of humans to be stuck in slip space, bouncing in and out while on the lookout for the rest of the surviving members of their species. Does time in slip space work differently that a ship that has been passing through a certain slip space tunnel for a few days might have been absent from normal space for eons?