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As Mitch and Ciara spend some quality time together, the Dark Horse investigates some Astronomical Phenomena

Hello, everyone! Sorry for the lengthy mid-season break, but the last two episodes of this season of the Star Patrol are ready and there's maybe a bit of plot development? Don't worry, there's also smut. I'm a simple dog. Patreon subscribers, this should also be live for you with notes and stuff.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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Tales of the Dark Horse, by Rob Baird

S5E4, "The Mission"

Stardate 67392

When Lieutenant Vasquez asked if the food got any better, the wolf did so fully aware that in all likelihood he already knew the answer. Ensign Srivastava's smile reassured him that his intuition had been correct. It did not, however, reassure him about the food.

"Is that what you miss most about being planetside?"

Rika shook her head.Time for that conversation, the dhole thought. "I tend to avoid planets, let's say. I don't... I just don't like them much."

"Don't like them?" Vasquez was, briefly, puzzled by the concept. "Anything about them in particular?"

"Pretty much everything." She worked her chopsticks into what had, rather disingenuously, pretended to be 'pasta,' trying to ignore the gelatinous way it clung to the utensils. "Kinda... actually everything, yeah."

The wolf's ears flicked as he thought, and then everything clicked. "Vassiliev's syndrome?"

"You know about that, sir?"

"Not directly. Somebody at the Academy mentioned it." Although, after reflection, he figured it was worth explaining the context, as well. "They were making fun of me for being the exact opposite."

"Don't like starships?"

"Or space stations. I'm always much happier if I can see the sky above me. But I'm sure it's nothing like what you go through--I didn't mean to say it was the same, or anything."

Chandrika felt herself growing more at ease with the wolf--he was a friendly sort, and she gathered it was only a matter of time before he told her to stop calling him 'sir'. She laughed: "Maybe not the_same_, but it's better than most people. I guess the Dark Horse must be particularly bad for you. Uh, 'cause I like it a lot, sir, I mean."

"It's not great," Vasquez admitted. It was, in fact, rather like a museum piece:Can You Imagine We Had to Go to the Stars in These, Once? "But I hope I'll adapt. Is there anything you miss about station life? The food?"

"The food was better, for sure. I miss being out of touch with the Confed, too. My parents have lived and worked at Franklin since before I was born. I used to be able to talk to them almost every day... and we miss all the latest news. I'm sure we hear the important things. But..."

Now, realizing the consequences of their distance from Terra for the first time, Vasquez flattened his ears. "That's a good point. And the Razors were doing so well, too."

This was, ordinarily, the point at which his conversation partner cocked their head and asked for clarification. As it happened, however, it was also ordinarily the point at which_Chandrika_'s conversation partner did the same thing. She blinked. "The Renniki?"

"Yeah."

"You're a Renniki supporter?"

"Yeah? I grew up on Pargala II."

The dhole did her best to keep her narrowed gaze playful, but within the decorum implied by the chain of command. "The whole Knights thing..."

"That? Wait... why the Knights?"

The wolf was smiling, to her relief, and Chandrika felt more justified in her glare. "Ricrif doesn't have a team, obviously. But the Knights have always had at least_one_ player from Franklin, since Letman in 2614. It's as close as we get. Right now there's three--including Patel. We could've tied," she grumbled, the last sentence under her breath.

"You could do a lot of things if you just stood in front of the ball."

She huffed. "There was_no_ way that was an out!"

"They don't teach inertia at Ricrif?" Vasquez teased her. "What do you think would've happened to the ball if Patel wasn't there?"

"Nothing! Unless you're... I dunno, positing the existence of spontaneous quantum singularities perturbing the path of a ball when it benefits the damn Razors. Sharp as--my_ass_ they--uh. Uh. Sorry, Lieutenant Vasquez."

"Everyone else winds up calling me 'Pancho,'" he said. "Look. I know gravity does work different for you station-people, but I'll show you sometime what happens when you throw a ball."

Rika bristled, curling her muzzle in exaggerated frustration. "Where's the step where you blind the umpires? It's--it's just not cricket."

"You have holographic recreations for me to review, I'm sure." The wolf grinned, eyes dancing. New to the ship, he was still trying to feel his way around the crew--but they all seemed pleasant, and a fellow cricket fan was a rare find. "Prepared by the finest scientists at Research Center Rosalind Franklin."

"As a matter of fact... wait, is that your communicator?"

It was, and he held his paw up, bidding Rika wait for a moment while he took the call. "Lieutenant Vasquez here."

"Lieutenant, please report to the captain's ready room." It was the voice of Leon Bader, their tactical officer. Vasquez's ears pinned again and, after acknowledging the request, he closed the channel and stayed quiet for a second.

The change in his mood was obvious. "Sir?" Rika prompted.

"It'll be... it'll be alright," he said.

That was more of a_hope_ than anything else, because he knew what the meeting was about. Vasquez slid his remaining dinner into the food recycler and made his way to the ready room, directly off the bridge in the center of the ship. The journey felt much longer than a few dozen meters.

But he gathered his nerves, and none of the assembled crew noticed anything out of the ordinary when the wolf joined them. Besides Bader, Captain May was also waiting, along with the_Tempest_'s pilot, Lieutenant Commander Munro, and their first officer, David Bradley.

And--only confirming Vasquez's fears--Dr. Beltran, the diplomat. The leopardess's paws were folded on the table in front of her. Vasquez would have been neither surprised, nor terribly reassured, to learn how quiet she'd been for the duration of the briefing preceding his arrival.

"Commander Munro suggests you probably don't need a summary," May said. "Admiral Mercure spoke to you both."

"Yes, ma'am. I imagine this is about the Admiralty's proposed reconnaissance mission."

"Got it in one." The Akita nodded in Bradley's direction. "Dave said you might have some insights about the Pictor, based on what we learned in our engagement with them."

"About their tactics," Bradley clarified. "Whether they might've changed since the last war. If you've had the time to study the battle."

"Yes, I have. It's difficult to draw conclusions," he began; Maddy cut him off before he could hedge any further. All the same, in the interests of responsibility, the wolf did his best to present a defensible view.

Outwardly, the fight showed no particular change in how the Pictor conducted battle: overwhelm your opponent with light vessels, always trying to get close enough for boarding operations or ramming maneuvers. The boarding ships themselves were reasonable extrapolations of older Pictor designs, and so were the missiles they used in abundance.

But they hadn't been_planning_ for a fight. There was just one ship, not the medium-sized fleets the Pictor typically used in offensive operations. And what did that mean? Was it simply coincidence, or had they begun using larger dreadnoughts in smaller quantities?

"What about the guidance systems, sir?" Leon asked. "The transmission protocols, the counter-jamming mechanisms..."

"My background is at the strategic and political level. I'm not an expert on individual systems. I could only speculate, and my speculation would be..." He paused. Madison May was standing at the display board, waiting to write down what he said. "Only that."

"Do it anyway."

He would grow used to this, in time. For now, he was learning on the job. "Alright, ma'am. I think it may be safe to assume that Pictor technology hasn't materially advanced in the last two hundred years. Please... with respect, ma'am. Can you write... 'Possibly same as last war,' instead?"

Maddy scrawled in 'possibly,' although she was compelled to keep the text small. "Go on..."

"We know the Mediator caste held sway in the Pictor Synod for most of the 27th century. We don't know who succeeded them, but anecdotally, I think the evidence points to the Mercantile caste. That would explain, for example, the Edaxil War--from what we know, almost purely a resource play. It was also explain the trading ships we've seen along the frontier."

"Pictor ships?" Felicia Beltran spoke out of turn from her surprise at the news--there'd been no mention in any of her briefs from the Foreign Ministry. "Or simply their allies?"

"Pictor ships."

"Recently? I was not told, captain. Pardon my interruption."

Vasquez cleared his throat. "It's a Part 15, doctor. Dissemination is by name only."

Of course it is, the leopardess thought, constraining her growl to a twitch that only briefly showed her fangs. And of course they didn't include me. "Do you trust it, Lieutenant Vasquez?"

"Direct observation, with the telemetry confirmed by the ISD Signals Department. Some of our best analysts have been working on the reports."

"Also name-only. Naturally," Dr. Beltran allowed irritation to creep into her voice.

May picked up on that, although very little else. The Akita held up her paw. "Do either of you mind telling me what's going on?"

Vasquez demurred, on what proved to be a reasonable ground: "Dr. Beltran is likely to have more of your trust, captain." He nodded in the leopardess's direction, and continued in her native tongue in an attempt at deference: "I'd take no offense, doctor."

The language--Mughtela--dated back to some of the first Terran colonies. Beltran thought in Mughtela; for a moment it startled her to hear it out loud. "Excuse me?"

"Your record with the captain is impeccable."

She'd all but stammered the first interjection, and forced herself to recover quickly, switching back to English. "Yes. Thank you. Directive 176 defines exceptions to standard best-practices," Beltran explained. "Part 15 concerns individuals--generally criminals--who are granted qualified immunity in exchange for information. Obviously, it is best to be skeptical of such information. But, if Lieutenant Vasquez says it can be verified, then... I have no objection."

"I don't know the source, either," the wolf went on: he'd only been shown the results of analysis from the Internal Security Division's signals-intelligence branch. "But Pictor trading vessels were spotted at an outpost run by a foreign criminal group, the Deruj. Analysis of the vessels... well, they look basically like they did in the last war. The Mercantile caste wouldn't have had any reason to invest in major ship upgrades if what they had already worked. None of the Empire's neighbors pose a military threat, either."

He tried, once again, to stress that they were trying to draw conclusions from extremely limited information. Star Patrol's listening outposts were all but useless, the non-interference treaty limited contact with Pictor allies, and the Pictor themselves were so reclusive that so much silence hadn't_really_ been surprising.

And that, in the end, made it Lieutenant Commander Munro's turn to speak. "So if we don't have any reliable information, captain, it... it may be time to find more."

"The request from the Admiralty," May said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're up to it?"

No, of course I'm not, the vixen thought. "Yes, ma'am. Based on what's been presented, and what we know so far--worse, what we don't know--it seems like the only reasonable course of action. I've already reviewed the analysis Vasquez prepared based off the last tactical updates from the Dominion, and there's a good candidate for a Pictor starbase, not too far inside their territory."

May looked in the direction of Dr. Beltran. "This is where you'd object, doc. If you were going to." They both knew she would not; the leopardess shook her head. "Alright. Dave, work with Shannon to get the_Tempest_ prepped for launch. Munro, I'd like you to stay here. The rest of you are dismissed."

There was more than enough work to be done, and the crew was more than aware of it: they left immediately, filing from the room to leave the two alone. Maddy sat down, and waited until the vixen had done the same.

"Do you have a mission plan?"

"Tentatively, ma'am. I'll head for the base in smaller jumps, one at a time. I'll stop, check the data I'm getting against what's in the database, and use it to confirm or deny what we're aware of already."

"You can adapt the stealth systems based on what you find?"

"I hope so. If there's any sign that I've been detected, I'll call it off and head back here immediately. If that's not possible, the ship has... some advanced self-destruction capabilities to prevent the loss of sensitive material."

"I'm sure it won't come to that." And, though it wouldn't have reassured Munro much to know it, May was sincere in her appraisal. Then again, things tended to work out for the Akita. "Who do you want to take with you?"

"Nobody, captain. I can handle this on my own."

"Unacceptable. I'm not sending a spy ship packed with one-of-a-kind Terran technology into hostile territory with only one crewman. What if you decided to defect?"

Ciara's eyes widened. "Captain, I--"

"I was kidding. But you'll need support, commander. It can't just be you."

"Nobody else is qualified on the_Tempest_. And it's too risky."

"That cuts both ways. If it's too risky for a copilot, Munro, then it's definitely too risky for you to do it on your own. Would you consider a volunteer?"

She understood, based on May's tone, that she was going to have to do so. "I suppose, ma'am."

May set a computer down; slid it across the table. "I asked the section heads to prepare a report a few hours ago, when I knew we'd be calling this meeting."

Ciara picked the device up, and the screen came to life under her fingers. It was a list of names. More than that... "This is everyone on the ship..."

"Almost. Not Ayenni or Dr. Beltran. And Sabel was a bit... too excited. Unfortunately, he'll probably get his chance soon enough--but not now, I think. So: who do you want to take with you?"

***

"We should do something to celebrate."

Ciara's attention was focused on the sensor reports from the_Dark Horse_'s last engagement, and recovering took her a moment. "What? Celebrate what?"

"Our one-hour anniversary. As_spies_." Mitch Alexander grinned, pointing to the navigation plot. "We crossed into Pictor space an hour ago. You were busy reading."

"I've been trying to figure out some of these... weirder signals."

"Then take a break." Mitch had fetched a piece of freeze-dried cake batter out of storage, triggered the chemical heating pack, and cut the result in two. "I'm not eating this by myself."

"Is it..."

"Says it's pound cake. It_looks_ okay. C'mon."

Ciara put the report aside and accepted a plate from her colleague. "How old was the pack?"

"Ehh..."

"Older than us?"

"Just like grandma used to make." Mitch grinned. But her first, careful bite didn't reveal anything off: the cake was sweet, a reasonable facsimile of freshly baked. "When she worked at the cake factory. During the war."

"We didn't have cake factories."

The Abyssinian giggled. "I know. You're from Zellen. You grow your own cakes--get 'em right off the trees or something. This won't beat that."

Ciara took a forkful and decided that the pound cake was, if nothing else, not suspicious_enough_ to chance looking at the ingredients list. "No, that it won't." Mitch was holding out a mug of tea, too. "Thanks for keeping an eye on me."

"Just getting bored." She dropped herself into the flight engineer's chair. "Seven hours to the first checkpoint, and we don't even have stars to look at. Gonna read all that way?"

"I don't understand how you can be 'bored,'" Ciara admitted. "It's a tremendously important mission."

"Wouldn't say otherwise.Didn't say otherwise." She stretched out her leg to prod the vixen with her temporarily unshod foot. "It will be exciting, soon enough. Didn't you ever want to be a spy, vix?"

The comic books that had formed a staple of Alexander's youth weren't common in Ciara's own farming community. "Not really, no. A pilot, yeah. But not a spy."

"Maybe you'll love it. We get to be all suave, and... well,you get to be all suave. Ironically, I think you'd look better in a catsuit than I would. Is it Agent Munro, or Agent Ciara?"

"Munro. I think." She was beginning to regret her choice of copilot, even if the Abyssinian_did_ have more experience than anyone else with the Tempest's systems. "Or 'Lieutenant Commander.'"

"Too wordy. Does Vasquez go by 'agent'? I've never met anybody from the ISD before. He's not what I expected."

He was not what Munro had expected, either, but she kept her mouth shut. "Lieutenant. It doesn't matter--he just tells everyone to call him by his first name." She finished the pound cake, and called the report back up, hoping Mitch would get the message. "Ask him when we're back aboard."

"I might. Wolves, though... wolves are so tricky. Sometimes you just have to push the right button. Sometimes they get weird about it. I've considered trying to get to know him better, but... might stick with Eli. I mean. Not_literally_--which is the downside, I suppose..."

Munro ignored Alexander's penchant for lewdness as best she could. "Lieutenant Parnell is a wolf?"

"With some coyote in her, I'm sure." She got up, taking Munro's abandoned plate. "Speaking of. Logs from the Riverjacks?"

"Yes. I've been trying to figure out this signal. It's not Uxzu."

Mitch stacked the two plates, put them aside, and leaned on Ciara so they were peering at the same data. "Nah. Comes from the dreadnought. Pictor targeting scanner--says it right there in the tactical view, that it's a point-defense guidance system."

"From the PRF, yes. But look at the energy values, spaceman. They don't seem strange to you? The cloak needs to be able to compensate for any variation."

Mitch tilted her head, ignoring the sideways glance she received from the pinned vixen. "Raw stream from... Jack's scout?"

"Captain Ford's, yes."

"With the preprocessors disabled?"

"I wanted clean data. There's no way to know what kind of artifacts are introduced..."

Spaceman Alexander saw that--trying to leave nothing up to chance--Ciara had scooped up as much telemetry as she could.Typical, in the Abyssinian's experience: users weren't always interested in just how much really happened before they saw results they took as "clean."

"Hey?" Ciara found her paws batted away from the computer while Mitch went to work. "What are you doing?"

"Phased array, vix. But they're tracking missiles, right? Lots of contacts. So they use a 3-dimensional Haijiki grate as an output filter. We do the same thing... here. Here's a line of fit between your 'anomalies' and the matrix adjustment."

She hadn't really followed the explanation, the feline was still pressed snugly against her shoulder, and the vixen didn't quite know what to make of the plot. "99.9999...9..."

"Your German's improving." With a playful snicker, Mitch pushed herself away from the pilot. "Anyway. The AL2320 on the Type 7 is a dedicated chip for it. Run a Haijiki, sum that against the original data, high-pass it to scrub the ghosts, and there you go. If you're really worried, hold a completely steady course. That makes the math a bit easier for the chip."

"It's not a problem for our countermeasures?"

"Nah. I'll double-check, but... I'm sure we're covered."

Bizarrely, Ciara found the Abyssinian's certainty reassuring. She didn't ask for any clarification--mostly because it wasn't, in her mind, the question that the vixen really wanted answering.

She_wanted_ to know how Mitch did it: how she switched so effortlessly from her lackadaisical rejection of everything Star Patrol protocol demanded to holding court on signal processing. Alexander would never be promoted to a position of authority, and she wouldn't mind.

It wasn't as simple as 'skill': the Star Patrol hadn't kept her around_just_ because she was smart enough to be worth her unorthodox attitude. And it couldn't have been as simple as what the feline herself said--that she was motivated by nothing more than a love of adventure.

But what_was_ it?

***

Every time the ship's sensors_ping_ed, Commander Bradley felt his stomach clench. This was the fourth such time during the shift, and it was only halfway over. "CCI, what's going on?"

Lieutenant Schatz was handling sensor duties from the science officer's usual station, which added context to whatever came from the signals themselves. "I'm not sure yet, sir."

"Weapons? Anything in the tactical databanks?"

"No. Significant gravitational distortions, coming from about three light-years away. It's an uninhabited star system. The alarm..." The computer had raised an alarm when new data coming from that direction appeared to be in direct conflict with the_existing_ data.

In particular, the star's spectral analysis had shifted dramatically since the previous survey: the amount of carbon had not only sharply increased, but it no longer fit a typical stellar profile. The Border Collie let his simulations run for a few seconds, ear twitching and head canting first from one side, then to the other.

"It seems to be a binary system, composed of a red giant and a white dwarf. The dwarf is... peculiar, sir. Fairly large, for one."

"Put it on screen," David suggested, so he could look at it for himself. Not that he was an astrophysicist, but the visual helped for Barry's explanation.

"Done. It's one of the largest we've observed. If I had to guess, this might be a merger of two white dwarf stars--apparently insufficient for a supernova. For now."

"For now?"

"Many trinary systems are inherently unstable. I don't have enough information to even_guess_ when this merger took place, but there's enough material left in the red giant that, ah... well, it's only a matter of time."

Commander Bradley stood, examining a viewscreen that the Border Collie had, less than helpfully, covered with models and graphs displaying his attempts at extrapolation. "There's no scale here. But I imagine when you say 'matter of time,' you're not talking about 'hours.'"

"No, sir. Millions of years, at least, and honestly the configuration itself is... a bit unprecedented. The closest parallel is maybe... TCNS-545B? But even that's a little different, because it's so far away that our sensor errors are... they make analysis difficult."

"Is this worth a closer look?"

"Scientifically? I did say 'unprecedented,' commander."

"I'm adjusting course, in that case. Figure out what you'd need for a proper investigation, and work with Lieutenant Hazelton to prepare any hardware."

Barry nodded eagerly--depending on how much freedom Hazelton gave him, he could think of_plenty_ of experiments that could be run. That occupied him for the rest of the shift: he scarcely noticed when Captain May arrived, even after Bradley called them to attention.

But May was used to that. "At ease. Dave, talk to me."

"I've shifted our course to investigate some intriguing sensor data we received. Nothing dangerous, I think."

"Alright. And if it is? Any security updates?"

"You'll find my analysis of Leon's tactical simulations waiting for your review. He has a new algorithm for the point-defense grid, which he says should make us more efficient in conjunction with the upgraded particle cannons."

The Akita nodded her thanks--Leon's 'simulations' had a way of being every bit as dense as Barry's, and he presented them with a sense of urgency that required her to take the shepherd seriously. "How much more 'efficient'?"

"It's hard to give that a percentage. But, by alternating between low-power pulses from the main guns and the point-defense batteries, he's convinced we'll be much more survivable in a head-on attack. I think he's right."

And the nature of the_Dark Horse_--a beam cruiser, with most of her armament locked in a forward direction--meant 'head-on attacks' were an inescapable reality. "Good. Engineering?"

"Nothing. Systems are functioning at a hundred percent."

This elided some_small_ details: their newest engineer, Tsukiko Kimura, was unhappy with the computer's performance and the team was seeing what could be done to amend that. Some of the gravitational plating needed work. A torpedo tube was marked for having its atmospheric sensors replaced. But May did not need to know this, and May was at some level aware she did not need to know this. "Alright. Anything from the Tempest?"

"No."

"Alright. I relieve you, then." May took the captain's chair, and scanned through the latest reports. "So where are we going, anyway?"

"A binary system. Just under two light-years away from us, now. Dr. Schatz thinks it may be unique. Undocumented in Star Patrol records."

May squinted at the main viewscreen, and the astrogation map displayed on it. "Just stars? What about Munro's mission?"

"Commander Munro will be able to find us with the sensors on the_Tempest_, and it doesn't pose any problems for communicating with her ship. We're explorers, aren't we?"

The Akita wondered if there was not, perhaps, a time and a place for exploration. "It is... one of our assignments, yes," she admitted to Dave. "But..."

"Otherwise, we're doing nothing until Commander Munro gets back."

She indicated her ready room with a dip of her head. "Can you spare a bit to go over the details with me?" He nodded and, with Lieutenant Parnell in charge, followed the Akita off the bridge.

"Details, Maddy?"

"I'm concerned about abandoning Commander Munro."

"We're not going very far. And, anyway, when she's communicating again, we can just update her on our position. If I thought there was a risk to the mission or to Munro and Alexander, I wouldn't have changed course."

"Couldn't we postpone the survey until they return, though?"

"Yes. But if we postponed it, we'd also find something better to do. As soon as she's back, we'll have new intelligence. We'll have to make decisions. Scientific research is going to have to take a back seat."

"Be honest with me, Dave?"

The retriever laughed. "I'm always honest with you, Maddy. When we're not on the record."

"Well... we're not on the record. Do you think we're too focused on the Pictor?"

"No." But he knew what she'd been trying to ask. "If they're a threat, we need to take them seriously. But... yes, the_Dark Horse_ is a warship, and there are personalities on our crew that are warriors at heart. Or they see themselves that way. I don't want opportunities to pass us by when they don't have to."

"We're just one ship, Dave. We don't know what's an 'opportunity,' do we?"

"And we won't. That's the nature of exploration, though, Maddy: the reward_and_ the risk. I think it's important that the legacy of our mission be more than just tactical intelligence."

"And--" she caught herself.

"And?"

And you're sure about Munro? He'd already said that he was, though, and as soon as May pondered if the question needed asking she knew it did not. "Nothing. Hazelton's on board?"

"She gets to tinker, doesn't she?"

"True. Alright. Get some sleep, Dave. I guess we'll see what's going on in a few hours."

***

"Maybe if we get really lucky, we can read 'em. Catch up on the news."

Lieutenant Commander Munro shook her head. "Not that lucky, no. It's encrypted. But definitely a Pictor transmission... or somebody using their radio modulation and frequency bands. Can you tell me anything else?"

Given that she did not speak Pictor--and definitely did not speak in encryption protocols--the answer was a solid 'no.' But the Abyssinian pulled together what she could. "Unmapped system. Couple planets... nothing remarkable, not that I can see. We don't have any intel on it, so either the Star Patrol wasn't paying attention, or... well, the Star Patrol wasn't paying attention. But it's probably not military."

"Are the planets habitable?"

"Not to us."

"This might be a good opportunity to collect some data," the vixen mused aloud. "Test our hypotheses..."

"Might be!" And it would be an opportunity for excitement, one way or the other, so Mitch was immediately willing to play along. "Want me to get everything ready?"

"Let's. We can be there in five minutes, if that's enough time..."

It was more than enough: Alexander had the_Tempest_'s systems operational a minute later. She leaned on Munro's chair, looking forward at the destination marker on the viewscreen and eyeing the countdown with bated breath. "Excited yet?"

"Somewhat." Ciara decided she owed Mitch some honesty: "Nervous. It's our first time being tested."

"Not_our_ first time--that was the asteroid. You already know we make a good team, dear."

"'Dear'?"

"'Agent Munro'--is that better?"

The vixen gave her a weary look. "Take your seat. Thirty seconds to normalspace."

"You fly so smooth, though..." Snickering at the fresh glare, Mitch sat down and buckled herself in. "Okay, standing by."

"Five, four, three... hyperdrive... disengaged." Ciara switched the viewscreen into its tactical mode, which remained empty. "Nobody's shooting at us, so there's a start. Do we have company or not?"

"Maybe. I've localized the source of that transmission. It's coming from the gas giant ahead of us, but the atmosphere's giving me some problems. Mind taking us closer, vix?"

Munro kept a close eye on the ship's diagnostics, but the shields held and nothing gave any sign that they'd been detected. She lowered the_Tempest_ into the planet's upper atmosphere, watching all the while as their scanners painted one fuzzy line after the other on the tactical plot.

"I'm not_quite_ sure what's going on." Mitch hated to admit it, but the multiple signals couldn't all be coming from the same transmitter--not unless it was also, somehow, located in sixty different places at once. "It's either a thousand kilometers away, or--"

Rapid, urgent buzzing cut her off. "That's the--"

"Shit! Incoming! Two hundred degrees mark negative forty, ninety k--"

As Mitch finished saying_one contact_, Munro pushed the Tempest's nose down, deeper into the atmosphere. "Where did they come from?"

"I... oh, fuck--hit the brakes." The feline's thought process managed_action_ before explanation. The contact wasn't a missile: it was an unmanned ship, on an ascent trajectory. That meant it was going somewhere. That meant recalibrating the sensors, on a hunch, and--

"Coming to a stop," Munro said warily. "Why?"

The haze of the atmosphere cleared as Spaceman Alexander adjusted the sensors to compensate, and the synthetic view built by the ship's computers rendered, in perfect clarity... "That."

"What_is_ that?"

It seemed like a delicate metal lattice: fine spiderwebs connecting various spurs and spokes off a cross-shaped structure below them. The lattice, though, was fifty meters in diameter at its narrowest, and the long axis of the cross spanned nearly seventeen hundred kilometers.

Hundreds of ships swarmed it, in courses regular enough that Mitch was sure they, too, were automated. Controlled, doubtless, by an orbital transmitter parked a hundred kilometers over the center of the cross--the station's link back to deeper Pictor space.

"A refinery," the Abyssinian decided. "Each of these nodes is a fusion reactor. Or it's acting like one."

"Four_hundred_ of them?"

"Four hundred and thirty. Half a petawatt of sustained power. Pretty neat. You can see all the redundancies they've built in... all those spars are... probably honeycombed kuritanium. Spectral's being weird, though. It's the atmosphere screwing with the impulse return."

"Shut it down," Munro ordered at once. "We can't risk active scanners."

Mitch did as she was told--Ciara sounded panicked, and that motivated her copilot before prudence returned. "Done. But there's like twelve crew on that station. They're not looking for us. We weren't looking for them."

"What happened? Why didn't we see it?"

"Same reason they didn't see us."

"We don't know that." And they might, Munro thought, need to call off the mission altogether--all because she'd gotten cocky. Her paw rested on the throttle, and she tried to calm herself down. "What? What did you say?"

Ciara was cute, in Mitch's opinion, but not_especially_ so when she was flustered, or worrying, or getting paranoid because she didn't understand something. The Abyssinian sighed, and repeated herself more carefully: "Yes, we do."

"How?"

"Because we got that bogey from a thermal alarm, and we're pretty much background. The ship didn't change course, no_other_ ship changed course, and there's nothing in EM that looks like any kind of response."

"Maybe they're biding their time," Munro said, although she was starting to settle down. "Do you see any warships? Nothing looks familiar..."

"Not to me, either. I think they might've been figuring on, um, 'security through obscurity.'" Of course, they'd made their way well inside Pictor space, and from what Mitch knew--what her comic books said--the Pictor didn't have much internal dissent to worry about. "Fortunate for us, huh? Getting plenty of data on their electronics."

"Useful?"

Any data was_useful_. She wished Ciara had been willing to take TJ along, although Mitch had to admit the two of them together probably would've overwhelmed the vixen. "I think so, yeah. In particular, it looks like... can I borrow the viewscreen?"

"Sure. Why?"

Mitch called up an EM overlay, with the power conduits of the mining rig traced like blood vessels beneath its skin. "Used to be they generated some high-frequency noise. Probably from crude dissipaters, y'know? But that's not showing up now."

"So their scanners might be more sensitive," the vixen guessed. "They won't have that notch at five millimeters. Our cloak should already cover that."

"Yeah, it does. But, we might want to keep an eye on it. If we get pinged in that band, it means they're aware it was a blind spot before."

"Good call. Set it up."

The Abyssinian flashed a grin. "See? I'm not_just_ a pretty face."

***

Captain's log, stardate 67394.2

With Lieutenant Commander Munro's mission still underway, we've diverted to investigate an intriguing astronomical phenomenon. The ship remains at high alert, but hopefully there's nothing here beyond interesting science...

"Re-entering normalspace... now."

"Tactical?" May called. "Anything?"

Leon's alerts were completely silent. "No, ma'am. Nothing on scope."

"Stand down from Gold, please. Dr. Schatz, what do you have for us?"

Barry adjusted the viewscreen to point at the two stars. "It's a binary star system. Or... it is now. I don't think it always was. I believe we're looking at the remains of two white dwarves, merged into one. This isn't_that_ uncommon, but... most of the time it results in a supernova. This didn't."

"And it's stable now?" Dave asked--the Border Collie had mentioned that, somewhat offhandedly, and he wondered if their science officer had learned anything more on their approach.

"Sort of. It has a long orbital period. Every few decades, they come close enough for the dwarf to draw hydrogen off the other star."

Captain May, who trusted her crew and was willing to indulge their curiosity, still didn't see what the fuss was about. "And we happen to have found it in one of those times?"

"No." Barry ran an extrapolation, and projected its analysis on the screen. "We're about eighteen years through a forty-year cycle. But,eventually, the dwarf will acquire enough material to go supernova. Probably. Or... no? Maybe not?"

As more data came in, he began to suspect that, instead, the star remnant acquired just enough hydrogen to blow off in a gentler eruption every few cycles. If it was growing more massive--he wasn't sure yet--the foretold supernova might well be eons in the future.

The system itself was still settling into place. "The formation event itself must've been in the extremely recent past. No more than... tens of thousands of years. Moments ago, as far as stars are concerned. We're extremely fortunate to be observing it, captain."

"Yes," she said carefully. "I suppose I, um... I appreciate the_urgency_. Can we learn anything from it?"

"Absolutely!" Barry's mind reeled at the very thought, definitely enough that he missed the skepticism in his captain's voice when she spoke of 'urgency.' "We should launch the probes Hazelton and I were working on."

Lieutenant Vasquez had spent some time on the way to the_Dark Horse_ studying the cruiser's journey. More than that, he thought of himself as something of a renaissance man, and spoke up in the pause while May considered how to be more diplomatic. "I'm curious... Lieutenant Schatz, can you show us what this would look like from the Kellem system?"

"Kellem?" The Border Collie put a map on the forward viewscreen, and changed the angle. "Something like this, I guess. Why?"

"Does that look like two fins to you?"

Dr. Schatz froze. "You don't think... wait..."

Maddy froze, too, and shook her head quickly. "No--hey. No, no. One of you needs to explain to me what's going on before Barry gets too excited."

But her opportunity had already been lost. "Kellem II joined the Terran Confederation in the early 27th century, right? They're in the Alluran sector, and very new to interstellar flight. A Nizari science ship found them--the technology they use in their FTL drives is very similar to Nizarian pulsed wave-draggers, so the signatures are quite different from ours. I think that's why it was the Nizari who handled first contact. There was a wealth of cultural knowledge exchanged, of course. But one story--the Stavesh--uh, so... take a step back."

"Several," May cautioned. "Take several steps back. Lieutenant Vasquez: while Barry catches his breath, why don't you fill in the gaps?"

Vasquez couldn't help smiling at the collie's enthusiasm. "The Stavesh tribe claims to have always known about extraterrestrial life. They were contacted by mysterious travelers--their gods--fifteen millennia ago. Eventually the gods left them, headed in the direction of a constellation, the--"

"Two-finned shark," Barry cut in. "The gods created a new star, suspended between the fins, to point the way when the Stavesh were ready to join them. The star faded, but the gods promised it would reappear every ten generations. That cycle hasn't happened since they joined the Confederation."

He'd forgotten the most tantalizing bit of the legend, though. "Twin stars, representing the union of the Stavesh and their gods," Vasquez corrected. "So many cultures have legends about alien contact that I'm sure nobody took it seriously. If it was true, I wonder who they might've been?"

"You might not have to wonder." Felicia Beltran hadn't yet made up her mind about Vasquez--he was too chipper, and Internal Security besides. But he did speak her language, and he seemed fairly reasonable, so when he looked at her she allowed herself to keep going. "We were given an artifact by an alien named 'Qalamixi,' and the records go back that far. It's at least worth checking out, I'd imagine."

"Qalamixi!" Barry piped up immediately. "Right--I can show you the interface, if you want. Not the easiest thing in the world to understand, but there's an incredible amount of information if you're up to taking a look."

"I'd love to. Perhaps once you've launched your probes?"

"Oh. Right. Good point..."

***

"About a minute left." Ciara watched the countdown with a building sense of apprehension. They'd encountered the Pictor once and escaped, which should've reassured her... on the other hand, they'd also been taken by surprise, and they couldn't afford to have that happen again. "All systems go?"

"All systems go," Mitch confirmed.

But they were well inside hostile territory, and completely alone. "We need to be ready for anything. Stay alert."

Snickering, Mitch ruffled the pilot's shoulder with her paw. "I'm not letting anything happen 'til I'm good and done with you, vix."

Be that as it may. Ciara's muzzle tightened. "Just be careful. Ten seconds."

"It'll be fine..."

If Lieutenant Commander Munro was sure of_anything_, though, it was that the encounter would not 'be fine.' No sooner had she cut the hyperdrive than the Tempest's cockpit filled with the sound of alarms. "Contact."

"Right where we want 'em. Eighty thousand kilometers, dead ahead. I'm switching the aft sensor pod on."

"Aft? They're ahead of us."

"Mm-hm, but with the pod cold we're gonna start generating a temperature differential. Easier to correct it if we balance out the power grid." The difference was still minimal--for the moment--and Mitch wanted to keep it that way.

"Okay. I need to use the engines. Ten percent for... 6.5k."

Spaceman Alexander ran the numbers and grumped. "I don't think you can exceed three or four percent, vix. Puts us pretty close when the maneuver's done."

"What about the ventral thrusters? They're better-shielded from that angle."

"Yeah." A few more quick calculations reassured the feline. "You're clear to half power, then."

Munro counted down out loud and fired the maneuvering thrusters, shifting the_Tempest_ onto a course that would carry it past the dense collection of enemy signals on inertia alone. "Done. Any sign they see us?"

"No. Everything's fine here. And look: we're starting to get data."

Ciara swiped her paw from each resolved contact to the next. "There. It's the ship May said you encountered. The...Uhultiran."

"'Silver meteor,' in Pictor. That's the one."

"You speak Pictor?"

"They're the bad guys in one of the comics I follow. Anyway, I'm sure it's named after the dreadnought from the Battle of Sogak Forge, the_Uhulhukiwa_: 'silver comet.' Don't you read nothin' but scout-ship data?" Mitch teased. "If you roll us, I can get a second LIDAR pass."

The vixen worked them through a careful, precise corkscrew. "Good?"

"Very. I want better spectral to be sure, but, uh, if you asked_me_? They're putting new armor on that son of a bitch."

"Ablative. As a countermeasure to the beam weapons," Munro guessed. "What would you need for a proper spectral analysis?"

"Time."

"How about a 2k retro maneuver? Three components..." Ciara added them to the navigational plot, a careful course to keep anyone from noticing the spy ship's engines firing.

"Go for it."

"We're not too hot?"

"Not yet." Mitch kept an eye on the thermal readouts, scarcely blinking while the remaining delta-v ticked down. "Just wait 'til the way home."

Ciara cut the throttle, relaxed, and rolled her eyes. "Do you ever stop?"

"Never," the cat promised. "Oh, this is good. You're beautiful, aren't you?"

She'd found it impossible to be_too_ careful around the Abyssinian, so Ciara looked over her shoulder. "Who are you talking to?"

Mitch tapped at her console with claws extended, the clicks adding emphasis to the image spreading on the viewscreen. "The internal structure of that ship." It had been exposed in more than a few places, either from battle damage or ongoing repairs.

"It's not made of kuritanium..."

"Oh, it is. It's just wrapped in a polybolonide matrix. PB-II, I think."

"Like a_Penny J_-type freighter?" Ciara had to see that one for herself. "Why?"

"Because they're inefficient as fuck, but they scale. I don't even want to guess at the ship's power output--I bet she could ram right through a planet and not even notice."

"But if we punched into the armor belt and collapsed one of the supports..." It would bring the whole structural integrity field down, in the best-case scenario. "That means the next question is... where do we do that?"

"I'm finding out what I can." In the Terran Confederation, the old style of artificial structural integrity had been obsolete even before the_Dark Horse_ was launched. Penny J freighters stuck around because they were all but indestructible... if everything was well-maintained and nothing unexpected happened. "Perhaps the hangar bay would be a good start."

"Keep looking," Ciara ordered. She went back to cataloging the rest of the ships: hundreds of vessels, half of them at least the mass of the_Dark Horse_ and all of them well-armed. "Something tells me it'll come in handy."

Mitch started a new set of calculations and, while she waited for them to finish, joined the vixen in reviewing the tactical scan. "Not mining ships," she agreed. "Enough firepower to blow Clearwater into pieces from the recoil alone."

"How many assault ships do you think that carrier can launch at once?"

The Abyssinian tapped through a few screens of synthesized data. "None--she's not a carrier. Look again."

"It's not? It's huge. And with all those ports... comparatively light weapons... what are you trying to show me? Something about the internals?" Ciara turned. Mitch's muzzle was a whisker's length away from hers. Any second she'd stick out her tongue, or say something teasing, or give the vixen a playful shove...

Mitch nodded towards the display. "The mass distribution is wrong for those to be flight bays. It's a tanker, vix. Wherever they're going, they're planning on being gone for a while."

***

Dave Bradley's personal log, stardate 67395.6

Dr. Schatz is optimistic about what we might learn from this star system. Personally, I'm grateful to have something else to focus on beyond what might happen with the Pictor. I know that it's trite to say this isn't what I joined up for, but... it isn't what I joined up for. Maddy is more comfortable as a combat captain, and...

Well. I just hope that it all works out.

"The crew has been... tense. It's hard not to pick up on that, no matter how I try to distract myself."

"We're under a lot of stress," Dave said. That went for him, too; half an hour after getting into bed, he was no closer to sleep. Of course, Ayenni would've known that already.

"Perhaps the distraction would be easier with help."

The retriever looked at her curiously. Ayenni lowered the guard she normally kept around her thoughts, just enough that her mood filtered into the edges of the dog's mind. Curiosity shifted into a wry grin. "Help, huh?"

"You know me too..."Well. When Dave's paws slipped around the alien, drawing her closer, the physical contact shocked words from her. Not that it mattered: she spent so much time together that he heard it as clearly as if she'd spoken aloud.

I'm going to try kissing you. For his part, Dave didn't have to say that, either. Ayenni wiggled herself into the retriever's embrace, sharing his delight in the plush silk of her fur, and the warmth of her body. And when their muzzles met, the two all but melted together, soothing heat rippling through the telepath to blanket whatever stress remained.

Her species, linked telepathically as they were, tended to eschew touching unless absolutely necessary--it made it harder to keep one's consciouses separated. Kissing had been a novel, breathtaking experience the first time it happened. Now she was more used to it--couldn't understand how the Yara managed to miss out on so much...

But it_was_ distracting. Her environment was becoming one of unfiltered thought: flickers of half-finished notions, and urges before they became actions. The two drew closer; she felt him move, weight shifting over her. She was briefly aware of how hard the dog had become, but it was the impulse, bleeding over from his mind to hers, that seized more of her attention.

A thrust followed, instinctive and searching, sliding him through her pelt. Dave growled quietly, guiding himself to her--the metaphysics linking desire and movement much less important, in that moment, than the soft warmth he found, parting easily around his tip.

She tried to prepare herself for the rush of his emotions as he pushed into her: the pleasure of her slick, welcoming heat spreading down the length of his shaft with his slow thrust, and the sense of their bodies connecting. It was futile, like always; he'd just barely entered and Ayenni already felt herself becoming overwhelmed.

Her resistance collapsed entirely at the halfway point and the rest of that first thrust stretched out into a fluid, glowing, dizzying eternity for the alien. Enough of her reaction washed back into the retriever's thoughts that he groaned, hilting swiftly in surrender.

The course of her paws on his back left an electric buzz in their wake as she stroked his fur; their tongues met languidly, and he felt Ayenni shudder beneath him, absorbing the raw evidence of his desire for her, and the intimacy of the passionate kiss. He paused; savored.

But for the retriever, nothing compared to being inside her. Snug velvet clung to him, squeezing in subtle pulses that arced Ayenni's own delight from her overstimulated nerves to his. It bubbled over in a gasp and a flush of radiant color when he swiveled his hips in a second, gentle stroke.

And for her part, nothing compared to being filled. His thick cock stretched her, sank deep inside until the physical_presence_ alone was exhilarating. But as he spread her, more than heat pressed into Ayenni's folds: she felt his need being satisfied, his carnal urges slaked.

With little effort she could tug on those, unraveling what remained of anything beyond their union. Her delicate paws teased the fraying edges of his restraint until he started to thrust in earnest, and when her legs wrapped about his pistoning hips the added contact proved an irresistible impulse.

This was one of the advantages of being a telepath. Rocking powerfully into her, driving their hips together, Dave enjoyed one of the advantages of mating with one. He rode Ayenni's rising pleasure on pure instinct--now faster, now gentler, now with a slight shift to the angle of his penetration that ground the bulge of his knot with exquisite precision.

She was going to lose control. Ayenni forced herself to concentrate--fought her peak back, and searched the dog's mind until she found the tension there, taut like an snow-bowed, overburdened tree limb. She prodded: a growl and a rougher plunge was her reward, a firm pump when he hilted to gauge the resistance around the tie.

He knew what she was doing, at least subconsciously, but for all that he could help himself the alien might as well have been in heat. It was that sort of drive that traded any lingering gentleness for the short, hammering shoves that kept his cock buried so the knot could do its work.

And when it caught, and each thrust shifted less and less, the drive that had him pinning his lover. The drive that hitched him forward in sharp, frantic bucks that came to an end with a heavy lunge, and a throaty snarl, and the release that hit wave by throbbing wave as he flooded Ayenni with canine seed.

She clutched him, held on tight for the rhythmic twitches, and the gasps, and the spreading warmth inside her. Tension melted into gratification, and with his movements slowing the telepath relaxed her guard. She sought out the echoes of his passion, and the strength of their joining.

It took less than half a second. They were tied, after all, the evidence of their intimacy unmistakable. Her thoughts jarred at the realization of his heavy shaft locked in her and that was the last thing she knew consciously before her mind blanked. The rest was ecstasy.

Ecstasy colored saffron, ecstasy that sang like windchimes before a rush of wind and a peal of thunder; ecstasy that was spring-morning warm to the touch, and smelled of mint and honeysuckle--but ecstasy nonetheless. Dave's peak had mostly ebbed, but for a moment it surged back in sympathetic response--he groaned hotly, and bucked, and her soft cry deafened him for long seconds, leaving his consciousness sizzling erratically.

Dave opened his eyes--when he could--to find her squirming, ears back, each convulsion accompanied by a wave of deep crimson that washed her pelt, fading to soft pink in time for the next. At last the colors began to soften, and as her fur settled back into its customary white she relaxed with a shuddering sigh.

And a murmured apology that the retriever as much_perceived_ as heard. "What do you mean?"

Keeping their thoughts separate took concentration for the telepath, and her speech was slow. "I was trying not to overwhelm you. I... think I lost a bit of control."

"I'm getting better, right?" He wanted to kiss her, but experience had taught him Ayenni with her filters rubbed raw was often close to overstimulated, and it wasn't always comfortable. He settled for running his fingers down her side, instead. "Besides, I like it."

"I'd still prefer not to damage you." She grinned, gauged that she was, in fact, recovered enough for further contact, and licked the retriever's nose. Warm ripples of their shared afterflow bumped against one another. "But you are getting better, yes."

So was she, and as the Yara wasn't about to give up either sharing Dave's bunk or the surrender of having him tie her, more practice was good. The unique intimacy of their two species' mating habits complemented one another... and, like Dave himself, she was increasingly certain that was especially true for the pair in particular.

Formally such a bond was really only acceptable between two Yara. She'd more or less stopped caring about that, though--and besides: he_was_ getting better about absorbing her emotions, like she was getting better about managing the shock of physical contact. Very much worth it, she thought.

"Yes," he agreed.

That had been unintentional. She flushed, and laughed, and gave the dog a reflexive hug. "And the stress is... better?"

"Better. You could make a good therapist."

"Not everyone is eligible for this kind of therapy," the alien teased. "I think I'll stick to medicine, and count this as a..."

"Hobby?"

"Personal development."

They stayed snuggled together while his knot subsided, and for a good few minutes after that--until, indeed, the ship's radio alerted them. "Commander Bradley, Dr. Beltran, Ayenni. Report to the bridge as soon as you can."

Dave tapped his communicator. "On my way." Ayenni waited until he'd closed the channel before doing the same, and the retriever laughed. "I suspect Captain May already knows."

"I suspect you're right," the alien said; she had not tried to pick up on any signs from the Akita, however, and it was less awkward for the both of them if they stayed in the dark. "But why chance it?"

She kissed him, and asked for a few minutes to clean up. Bradley headed for the bridge on his own; Felicia Beltran met him in the hallway. "Do you know what this might be about, commander?"

"Not a clue. Contact, probably."

"Contact," May confirmed when the pair arrived. "Our probes are about two million kilometers away from the star. Apart from our science officer's copious research on the white dwarf, they've also detected signs of a hidden starship."

Barry called it up on the viewscreen. The image was still fuzzy, despite his efforts to clean it up without giving any sign that they were aware of the ship's presence. None of them recognized its configuration. Curving wings gave the impression it was capable of flight, but the Border Collie had already dismissed the idea: "the aft section, and the wing roots, are so dense they're creating noticeable gravimetric perturbations. Could be a mass-shift drive, but we've seen those in the sector before and this doesn't match anything in the database."

"Do we know if they're armed yet?"

Bradley understood from May's tone that she'd already asked the question; he understood from the collie's reply that Schatz had also already tried to answer it. "No. From fifteen million kilometers out, we can't tell much of anything, captain. But there is...some reason to believe so. Scans suggest they're regularly transmitting in a standard tactical-guidance band. The signals are weak, but..."

"Not anymore," Spaceman Ahmed reported. One of the_Dark Horse_'s probes had just been lit up. "Probe Dayton-4 is being pinged. And that ship is changing... course?" It was, by way of its engines, warping space-time around it--figuring out the new vector took the Ethiopian wolf several seconds. "They're moving to intercept the probe."

"I'm losing telemetry," Leon added--and then, as a helpful hint for his captain, the reason: "they're jamming the probe."

"Dr. Schatz, find a way to compensate. Tactical, stand by to bring our shields online."

The German Shepherd had long since done that, and run a few preliminary calculations on a firing solution based on what Barry could tell him about the hostile ship's hull. "Standing by."

"They're within two hundred thousand kilometers of the probe. We..." The viewscreen went dark, and Ahmed saw the probe had stopped transmitting altogether. "Switching to Dayton-3 for data."

"They opened fire?" May asked.

Leon thought this was highly likely, given the ship's moves to that point. "Some kind of unknown weapon," he suggested.

"No." Everyone but Ahmed--still trying to re-establish contact with the probe--looked at Barry. "Their engines. The probe's so far away that we're--CCI, go to legacy downlink."

"The delay's almost a full minute."

"Exactly. We wanted to keep our distance, right? So we're talking to the probes over the hyperspace transmitters. The other ship's engines are causing local disruptions, just enough to shut the channel down. But we should able to get data... right, spaceman?"

Sure enough, Ahmed was receiving information from the formerly silent probe. "Yes. It's about to go offline for good, though... the circuitry is being overloaded by sustained high-energy pulses." And, even if they wanted to compensate or evade, the signal wouldn't get there in time--thanks to the speed of light, he received confirmation the probe had died fifty seconds after the event had already occurred.

"They've found the next probe, captain. Shall I raise shields?"

"Hail them." May looked over her shoulder at the sound of the door opening. "Ayenni. You recognize this ship? This--right, no signal. Spaceman, can we see the ship again, please? Whatever the last image was?"

Ayenni's people had traveled most of the Rewa-Tahi, and her time working as a trader had exposed the Yara to many of its most common species. Space, however, remained uncomfortably large. "No, captain. Are there any markings? Any language?"

"None. And no response to our hails, captain," Ahmed added. "They're almost close enough to the probe to open fire."

"There goes that hope, Ayenni. Ensign Bader, are our weapons ready?"

"Active-standby, ma'am."

Barry had tried to teach himself Yara, and he recognized the faint blue pulse that ran down Ayenni's arms as a sign of her concern.Does she know something she's not letting on? What would she be concerned about? he thought, the question immediately turning into a realization that the impulse was reflexive for the alien.

Among her own kind, color formed a part of their syntax--changed the meaning of words and phrases in subtle, important ways, the way his perked ears would have indicated subconscious excitement had anyone still been watching him. Or had_he_ known that his racing brain was about to draw the last connection. May hadn't pressed the Yara further because she hadn't known what to look for.

Only coincidence meant Barry did. Ayenni caught a burst of energy from the Border Collie, and that he was thinking about her--she didn't like eavesdropping, but the emotion had been too strong for her to tune out. "Uh... Dr. Schatz?"

"This! Does_this_ mean anything?" He pointed to the viewscreen, and a ship now covered in swirling, interlocking patterns.

"No. What did you do?"

"Looked past near ultraviolet and shifted it back down into the visible spectrum. I'm not sure I_was_ seeing targeting scanners, Captain May. I think those might be comms signals."

"Or they might be targeting scanners. We just lost a second probe." Leon felt the reminder was called for, given the guileless purity of the Border Collie's excitement. Even_if_ the transmissions were innocent, they had destructive consequences.

And May, who still didn't_really_ know why they were spending time studying the white dwarf to begin with, wasn't unsympathetic. "Target the ship with the forward cannons, but keep them safed for now. Dr. Beltran, get ready. CCI, transmit on whatever band they were lighting the probes up with."

"That... would_be_ our targeting scanners. We'd have to use those if we wanted to try," Siraj pointed out. "They might see the act as hostile."

"They might, but I think we have to take our chances. Go ahead."

Siraj tied the radio into their targeting array and tried the standard hail again. Whatever else that did, it got the other ship's attention. An answering burst hit the_Dark Horse_ a minute later--redshifted by a vessel that was now headed towards them. "I'm not sure, but I think that was data. Just... terabytes of it."

"A translation matrix," Dr. Beltran said. "With your permission, Captain May, can I take over?"

"Be my guest."

"Resend our standard hail, with just the C set, and repeat at one-second intervals until they send a matching reply."

As they waited, May decided to ask: "Intuition?"

"No. A standard procedure. If they_are_ sending us a matrix, replying with a limited version of ours and repeating it should let them know that they are speaking too quickly for us to understand."

"'If,'" the Akita countered. "Sounds like intuition."

"Procedure."

Spaceman Ahmed watched the CCI console until the wolf could confirm what he was seeing. "We have a lock from the translator. The other ship is hailing us, captain."

"Put it on."

They would have no idea what the aliens_sounded_ like: computer synthesis was required, and rendered the voice polite and soft: "We do not recognize you, or your ship. Or your words. Perhaps... this could be corrected?"

"We do not recognize you, either," Dr. Beltran replied, matching the gentle modulation in her reply. "Our ship is called the_Dark Horse_, and we come from the Terran Confederation. My captain is Madison May, and I speak on her behalf. We are without hostile intent."

"The_Joba_ is a vessel of the Veyal-Vekel. We, too, would claim peaceful intent. But if you aren't hostile, why did you fire torpedoes at us?"

"Probes," May explained, out of turn. "This is Captain May. Those were probes we'd launched. We're studying this star. Apparently it's, uh. Interesting."

"Why?"

"To be honest... Dr. Schatz, a little help?"

"Oh, ah... hey. Yes, um, it's interesting because the white dwarf is unusual in our charts--I couldn't make sense of the composition. We think it might have been formed from the collision of two stars, some time ago. We haven't had the chance to look at something like this up close."

"Our hypothesis is similar. Perhaps we could collaborate? I wouldn't want to impose, but do you think... might your ship be amenable to an exchange of data?"

***

Captain's log, stardate 67396.7

Ayenni describes the Veyal-Vekel as something of an enigma: a race known in the sector, but never seen. Now we have our answer: their language and technology is completely different from anything else, and operates in uncommon spectra. The Joba is one of a dozen survey ships sent out on lengthy missions not unlike our own.

Dr. Schatz is as enthusiastic about the data we've received as the Veyal-Vekel were about what we could give them. The captain of the Joba says that, with the help of our sensors, they're closer to solving a mystery about a binary system near their own territory.

I doubt we'll ever see it, and never as they do: they're eight thousand light-years from the border of Veyal-Vekel space, and it's a long journey home for them. At least we know the direction: in exchange for our help, they've shared astrometric charts that reach well beyond the Rewa-Tahi.

"We should probably write something up for the scientists, if this is as, uh... anthropologically interesting as Dr. Schatz and Lieutenant Vasquez think."

"True." The task of 'writing something up' would, Dave guessed, fall to the Border Collie anyway. "They don't know what they're missing back home."

"Neither does the Admiralty. We need to find a more reliable way of communicating with Terra." Their isolation--often a boon--had begun to weigh on Maddy as the stakes of their mission rose. "I asked Dr. Schatz to see if we might be able to learn something from the Veyal-Vekel, and how they manage to communicate over long distances."

"Good idea. Did he think it was possible?"

"I don't know," May admitted. "He might've, but he's still pretty excited about the star. I'll give it a shift or two for him to reflect on things, and then we'll see."

Spaceman Ahmed, working the CCI station, interrupted before Commander Bradley could reply. "New sensor contact. It's the_Tempest_, captain. We're being hailed."

"On screen." The spy ship's crew looked tired, to May, but that was all: she had a good feeling about the operation. "Welcome back, Commander Munro. It's good to see you. Your mission?"

"A success. We made some unsettling discoveries--but we weren't detected, and we've also gained a lot of intel. I'd like to debrief you in person, though."

"Of course. Get some rest and come to me when you're ready."

"Yes, ma'am. And the_Dark Horse_? Did something happen?"

"We're... conducting some astronomical research. And making first contact."

Munro canted her head slightly. "Astronomical research?"

"It was a weird star that caught our attention. We are explorers, after all." May grinned. "We can debrief you on that once you're aboard. Bring 'em in, Mr. Ahmed."

Dave waited until the ship was on course, and Munro switched from the open channel to speak directly with Siraj, before turning to his captain. "Explorers, Maddy?"

"Your instincts were right. Not just because of the Veyal-Vekel, Dave, I mean... about the legacy of the mission. Did I tell you about Mirsho? He's one of Xabok Garra's husbands. We spent sometime together on Garakhav."

"You hinted at how the time was spent," he said, carefully. "But that was all."

"Xabok wanted him to meet me because he's something of a Terra aficionado, strange as it seems. It's stuck with me... he was impressed by how much we've accomplished without conquest, through exploration and partnership. It's not a very Uxzu thing."

"No..."

The Akita lost herself in the viewscreen, now filled with stars, and thought of how to explain herself. "It's not a Pictor thing, either. I want to believe it_is_ a strength of ours. We can't lose sight of that. We shouldn't forget who we are."

"I agree. Is there..." He'd noticed her wandering gaze, and the hesitation. "A complication? A 'but' in there?"

"If the Pictor threat is real, we have to care about it. And it's going to be on us to do that. The Confederation didn't protest when the Empire launched its new battleships. They ignored signs the Pictor have been making inroads with the border syndicates. They want to stay cautious even after the battle with the Dominion."

"True."

"So it's our job. The line must be drawn here, Dave--this far; no further. That means I have to be focused, and I need your help."

"Anything, Maddy. You know that. I understand our priorities--I hope you know that, too."

"Yes." She turned to look at him, and rested her paw on the retriever's own. "But. I need you to stay the voice that reminds me what we're here for, too. When_I_ can't--because I can't--you keep looking for weird stars, Dave."

"You have my word."

She thumped his paw warmly, and nodded. "That's how I know we'll do just fine."