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In the distant future, genetically engineered 'moreaus' fight for a new home on the battleground where they first gained their freedom.

The first chapter of a short novel--book one of two--that takes place on Jericho, the site of Steel and Fire and Stone. It concerns the aftermath of the fighting and rebellion there, and the attempt of a few moreaus to establish a safe home for their people. Let me know what you think :) The novel is written and 90% edited, so depending on how quickly you want to see the rest of it this can be your Christmas present~

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

Hatikvah, by Rob Baird -- Ch. 1, "The Dark Eternity to Come"

***

What roar is that?--'tis the rain that breaks In torrents away from the airy lakes, Heavily poured on the shuddering ground, And shedding a nameless horror round. Ah! well known woods, and mountains, and skies, With the very clouds!--ye are lost to my eyes. I seek ye vainly, and see in your place The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space, A whirling ocean that fills the wall Of the crystal heaven, and buries all. And I, cut off from the world, remain Alone with the terrible hurricane.

-- "The Hurricane," William Cullen Bryant

***

Hill 261, west of Sangan Army Base "Victory of March 2nd" Jericho, in the Viking System

"Sundown actual to all units: weapons free. You are clear to engage at will!"

Ajay steadied his paws on the control of the Rooijakkals and waited for whatever would come next. The remains of the captured Sanganese military base were behind them--whatever passed for safety on Jericho. Ahead of them, somewhere north of a thousand Sanganese soldiers were readying for a counterattack.

The leopard's Rooijakkals was one of seven in the platoon. Very little to hold back the tide. Ajay was a Trimurti moreau, trained to think in terms of probabilities. He had to force himself not to think of the odds. That was unhealthy.

"Kia ora, this is Cortana. Listen up!" 'Cortana' was their platoon sergeant, not far away from Ajay and his mech. A moreau, like the rest of them--nearly everyone in the company was a moreau. Fighting for humans: something else Ajay wouldn't dwell on. "We have an extremely simple objective. Prevent the enemy from crossing line Idaho, directly to our north. We have four gunships and one mortar battery tasked to support us. Patch all requests for fire directly to me. Anything you see is hostile. Let's get these bastards. Out."

Ajay checked his controls and called out to the two others in the walker. "Control systems operational. Final check, weapons?"

"Ready," Corporal Chanatja answered promptly. "Twenty HE, twenty-eight KEP. Ready to go active on your signal."

"Astra?" Astra was their assistant gunner, a muskrat who bared her teeth far more readily than either of her crewmates.

"APEC and ECM ready, Ajay. Let's go."

"Cortana, this is Skoll. We're ready."

"Skoll, roger. Your sector is 215 to 226. Hati, your sector is 226 north to the ridge. Do not engage north of 240 degrees." Some other section was covering that area; they couldn't afford to waste their limited ammunition.

Ajay nudged his controls to take the mech up and into the firing line. Astra would be watching through her surveillance scanners, keeping them safe--for as long as that mattered. It probably wouldn't take long. Sixty percent odds she comes up with something in the next minute.

Forty-one seconds passed before Astra found anything. "Contact. Right one, six thousand meters. Infantry in squad strength."

"Got 'em," Chanatja added a few seconds later. The white shepherd took a little while longer to decide on the best way to engage. "Rocket, I guess. Ready."

Ajay found a flat patch of ground and dropped the mech into a crouching position to stabilize the gun platform. He had to do so carefully; they'd been fighting so long the hydraulics were beginning to come apart. But for now it kept working: "Shoot."

The leopard watched the rocket's glare as it streaked upward, then plunged from a shallow arc down onto its target. Ajay couldn't see what was going on; that was Astra's job. "Good hit."

So it begins. It didn't matter. They were so outnumbered that none of it mattered. Just make them pay for it, that's all... that's what all this has come down to. Like it's worth it? Like any of it's--

"Oh, fuck--incoming!" Astra barked ."Ajay, left twenty meters--get defiladed in that crater."

On instinct he swung them back upright and leapt for the safety of the cover she'd found. The point-defense gun did its job, mostly, but they could all hear the rattle of impacts against their armored hull. At least nothing seemed to have gotten through. "Ah... Astra..."

"Trying to sort it," she growled back. "There's at least thirty signals. Mostly light weapons, but they'll have a recoilless or... something." Whatever man-portable recoilless rifles the Kingdom had wouldn't get through the armor of the mech, but they were more than enough to disable its systems... or a lucky hit on the windshield might--

Don't think about that either. The other mechs were having the same luck. "Calu, this is Hati. We're pinned down. Skoll, can we get some covering fire, here?"

Ajay checked his map to see where Hati was in relation to them: two hundred meters away. Not quite visible. He lifted the mech up, and didn't get more than a meter or so when the alarms came back on. "Missile launch! Multiple inbound tracks, twelve o'clock--good lord!"

Astra was probably an atheist, but Ajay could appreciate the sentiment. He dropped them back down into cover. "Countermeasures!"

"Yes, yes," the muskrat hissed. "Trying. Trashed one... two... that's all three of them."

"What's hitting us?"

"Ah... that's at least forty infantrymen, and we took three missiles there. Threat card has them as, uh, T-65s. Light man-portables."

"You are saying that we are also being pinned?" The muskrat grunted unhappily, and Ajay shook his head before clicking the mic on. "Hati, this is Skoll, negative. We can't get a firing solution before they light us up. Over."

"This is Calu. Stay down, we'll get a gunship in on it." That was their section leader's voice, sounding unreasonably calm. One of the four Griffons providing support swept over them, guns blazing--but as soon as Ajay had them back into position they were taking fire again.

He didn't like that. The APEC, their point-defense cannon, took the missiles out as quickly as they were being fired--but they'd run out of ammunition sooner or later, and then...

"Contact, twelve o'clock. They're setting up some kind of--"

"Got it. Firing solution. Ready."

Ajay glanced around for the best position and figured he'd have to settle for 'least worst.' The Rooijakkals dropped again. "Shoot."

"Good hit. Steady. Contact, twelve o'clock. Light vehicle, moving west to south."

"Ready."

"Shoot," Ajay repeated, growing uneasy. Staying in one position too long was a bad--idea, he finished the thought with an internal oath as shrapnel clattered against their hull. "We're hit. Report?"

"Auxiliary EM scanner's out on the right side," Astra replied. "Everything else is good. I think I can compensate. Wait one, need to reboot..." They slunk back further, into safer cover. "Think it's back online... yes. Yes. We're ready."

Calu, the section leader, was back on the radio. "Hati, Skoll, let's pull back about seventy meters and see if we can't find some cover." She still sounded calm, though Ajay thought an order to retreat didn't make for a good omen. They couldn't retreat forever.

And it wouldn't help, not that much. Astra yelped. "Target, right--fucking--targets everywhere. Just shoot at them already."

They couldn't, Ajay knew that. Chanatja's guns were running on gyros in no better condition than anything else, and they took longer to reset with every new evasive maneuver. There were a lot of those--the incoming fire was growing heavier. More accurate. Ajay winced as their mech bucked.

You didn't see yourself here, Ajay realized. Moreaus hadn't been taught human views of death; he didn't know the stereotype of seeing his life flashing before his eyes. But thinking back on his enlistment... you didn't see yourself fighting for some little hill on some little human planet for... what? Exactly? For--

"Damn it!" Astra brought her fist down on her console. "Damn it, give us a fucking chance! They're closing through three kilometers."

This is it, I suppose. "I seeing this, yes," he muttered. "Need to displace again."

"Come back thirty," Astra told him. "I think there's enough of a depression to get hull-down."

"Moving." Thirty meters. Another retreat. He pulled the Rooijakkals back one step. Two.

And then, a bright flash. But by the time his brain had time to realize what it had seen, the second round hit and nothing mattered any more.

***

City of Davis Capital of moreau-held Chartered Colonial Jericho

"When are you going to tell me the bad news?"

The Border Collie on the other side of the table smiled in his typical, reserved way. "It will cost, Kodja. On the order of six million obols for the first phase, and another eight and a half for the second phase."

Kodja had been waiting for that part--it wasn't even as bad as he'd feared. The golden retriever's nod came with a subtle, reflexive wagging of his tail. "The town budget can cover half of the first phase even without a tax increase. It makes enough sense, I think, that we should propose it at the next full meeting."

The Border Collie's name--he'd kept his human name at the colony--was Levin, and as a corporate dog budgetary analysis was one of his specialties. Kodja had gotten into a well-earned habit of trusting that Levin wouldn't waste his time.

Both of them had been wanting to replace the town's communications link for years--since before Kodja entered politics, when he was still working at one of the computing centers. Now they finally had the opportunity, courtesy of spare parts scrounged up by friends of friends somewhere else in the galaxy.

On such affairs, Kodja was too smart to ask questions. Perhaps the equipment had been salvaged, perhaps it had been stolen--if so, it would've been rendered untraceable. Six million obols would increase Davis's bandwidth by two orders of magnitude; the second phase of the project included repeaters to extend the coverage out to the outlying towns that made up the colony.

"I want to be clear about something else, though." This interjection came from Grey Palmer, a longtime resident of Jericho. And a human. One of the few who lived in Davis rather than the enclaves occupied by her kind; one of fewer who spoke nakath-rukhat... though not very well. "You should be ready for falling backwards."

Kodja switched from rukhat to English to carry on the conversation. "What do you mean? Falling backwards?"

"'Pushback,' Mr. Kodja. Sorry for misspeaking. This colony being dependent on the uplink at McKeever is one of the only points of leverage that our neighbors have over us. They're not going to like giving it up, and they're really not going to like us having the better deep-space connection."

"They don't have to like it," Kodja said. "Congress says this is our land."

Levin was a moreau in the most classic form: soft-spoken and non-confrontational. He didn't waste their time in debating the history of the colony, with its special charter that gave them some measure of autonomy. "It's our land only so far as we can defend it, sarunga. What if we offered to lease them space on the uplink? We'll have it to spare for many years."

"What do you think, Gerrich?"

A middling command of their language and a poor understanding of nakath culture came with one upside. Grey still thought like a human, and her human's perspective was invaluable. "Offer it at, or just above, cost. You might get some people willing to negotiate. It'll bring them closer to us, and drive a wedge between them and the council."

Levin was smart enough to have thought of the idea but not conniving enough to propose it; Kodja was neither. The retriever was grateful to have Palmer's advice. "Once construction is underway, would you please see about looking into those contracts?"

"Yes, of course. We could probably start earlier than that. I'm not entirely comfortable with Levin's proposal. I think you need to be ready for budgetary overruns."

"How much?"

Grey's business suit rippled flawlessly with her gentle shrug. "I haven't estimated it with any great degree of accuracy." Levin had started to smile; she gestured towards the Border Collie. "He said I was being a pessimist. Perhaps so, but it's the biggest capital investment you've made since I've been here, and the most complex. There'll be subcontractors to consider... simple problem, for instance. You need a few hundred meters of fiber and a machine to install it. Where are you keeping those? Your office? No, so you'd need to rent a place. That won't be much, but these things add up, too, and I think some outside investment would be helpful. A win-win situation, as we say."

"Ektasa," Levin agreed. "Sarunga?"

The retriever nodded, thankful as always for her advice. "Yes."

Grey looked between the two dogs. "I don't know what that means. Zadanu. Kihad," she added: please explain.

Levin, who had a father's patience and demeanor, took up the challenge. "A lesson in culture? Ektasa is not a real word, it's a phrase. Al-ekad al-tasku al-sar."

"The help of the best pack," Grey translated--slowly.

"Mostly, yes. Task means more like... 'ideal,' rather than just 'best.' The proverb says kisho hadanja hadan hakhash, zadin al-tasku al-sarja kunsalchatalla. Literally it means: because each weight is everyone's weight, the best packs must certainly always help themselves to carry it. In other words... the 'help of the ideal pack' is something that lifts everyone's burden at once."

Much as Kodja appreciated the human's perspective, he admired her curiosity regarding their culture even more. "You see that we don't really talk about 'winning' in the same way that you do. The pack is everything. The pack's members are everything. We're stronger together."

Grey repeated the proverb, getting the pronunciation mostly correct. "It's interesting. With Levin's permission, I'll prepare an appendix to the report and write up a presentation so we can start looking for investors."

The Border Collie agreed, and Grey left at once to begin work. Levin stayed behind, switching back to Rukhat and the mild deference it offered. "I do think she's being pessimistic, sarunga." The word meant 'littermate'--my brother. In the Jericho colony it had become more common than the word other moreaus used: jananga, 'my friend.'

"I do, too. But what's the worst that could happen? It doesn't dampen my spirits much. What about yours, Levin? What are you doing tomorrow? Will you come to dinner with Nuri and I? It's been too long since I've seen you and the pack."

He chuckled, the sound his customary quiet, chuffing laugh. "Not much of a pack. We're taking him to see one of the harvesters at a workshop in Salem tomorrow. He's at that age where he's fascinated by machines."

Levin's son was nearly three years old; freeborn nakath, it turned out, aged slower than their corporate kin and charting their progress compared to human youth proved difficult. The pup was bright and inquisitive, though; already full of questions about the world around him. "Better be careful, or you'll lose him."

"Don't you suppose I know it, Kodja? Last week he wanted to be a tailor. This week a farmer... two weeks ago a water inspector, after Kugarran showed him the reservoir turbines. I can't keep up."

"You have many responsibilities. Fine, fine. What about the day after? I've wanted an excuse to make dahana for a month now. Oh, Levin, I see you grinning--it's a date, then, right?"

"Yes. Of course." He laughed again. "You're in a good mood, Kodja. Have you really been desiring dahana and a new satellite transceiver that badly?"

"You mistake me." The retriever grinned, and leaned back in his chair. "I'm putting off my next meeting, that's all."

"It's not a budgetary meeting, I guess?" Levin said.

"It's not."

The mirth dropped from his old friend's face, and Levin reached across the table to take Kodja by the paws. "Watch her. She means well, sarunga. And we need her."

"I know."

But it was more complicated than that; more complicated than either of them wished to discuss. Sensing the changed mood, Levin excused himself and, alone in the room, Kodja got up and walked to the window.

Fifty years before, when the capitol was a corporate office, the administrator's room would've been its most prized real estate. It looked out over the buildings and bustling streets of Davis to the rolling hills and farmland and forest beyond.

When nakath settled their own colonies they tended to be pastoral, at best. Only a few hundred people lived in Hana Lanja, most of them fishermen; the streets were grassy paths. Dawa was much larger but, if anything, even more extreme; most of the residents lived in burrows or hills next to their farms and the hamlet's pride was its irrigation network.

But not Davis! Davis had been human, once. The streets were paved and lit at night; the workshops hummed with activity. From his office he could see the solar plant at Ikashta, and the trees fringing the Arkadiensee. A few kilometers beyond Ikashta was the Rattan Steel refinery, a human outpost...

He could not make that out, although he wished it was possible to do so. The Davis colony's relationship with its neighbors was imperfect, of course. But who would've thought it was even possible to coexist at all? In this place, no less. In time, he wondered if more humans might join the few dozen who lived inside the moreau colony's borders. Its charter gave it broad autonomy, and as it was the only one of its kind on the planet nobody misunderstood when they called it the Chartered Colony. Perhaps in the future humans would think of that charter as giving it enough legitimacy to settle there.

The future was opaque to him, but it made for pleasant daydreams, and Kodja considered himself an idealist the same way Levin was. He stayed at the window, looking at the town's square, until his intercom chimed. "Your next appointment is here, al-inana." The word, 'honored,' was as formal as Nakath-Rukhat ever became.

"Send her in."

He turned in time to see the door open. According to rumors, Altalanuk had spent the last two weeks hiding, scouting in the woods along the colony's border. If so, the Ibizan hound looked no different than ever. Same broad, perked ears; same thin, unwagging tail. Same fire in her eyes. Same uniform.

"Inanu Alta," Kodja greeted her. She straightened up stiffly. "At ease, Talla. Will you sit?" Altalanuk relaxed, flicked her sharp gaze to the chairs on the other side of his desk, and walked over to one. She waited until he sat down to do the same. "You wanted to discuss some intelligence?"

"Yes, sir. I've been reconnoitering with Major Kalasos and we've gathered quite a bit. With your permission, I would also like to discuss what we do with it."

"Talk, then."

"The JBC is rearming. Their patrols have increased threefold since six months ago, and they're using new equipment."

"It's their right," Kodja said, though the news disquieted him. The Jericho Business Council coordinated human affairs on the continent, connecting the twenty or so corporate enclaves who were theoretically loyal to the same Yucatan Alliance as the Chartered Colony. Even so, Kodja thought of 'Yucatec Jericho' and the JBC as something different. "None of our business how they spend their time and money."

"I might agree with you, but border incursions are also going up--at least one a day between Ikashta and Corsini for the last week. They cannot be accidental, sir." She held a computer up, drawing his attention, then placed it face-up on his desk. "They're mostly mining surveyors."

"The area is somewhat mineral-rich, Alta. It could be that they only want a better perspective on their own side of the border-line."

The Ibizan's hard eyes held him in a level gaze. "Even if that were true, sir, they do not have the right to encroach on our property. And I don't believe that it is true. We've seen nothing at all to suggest that they're planning on opening new mines. They're using the sensors on those surveyors to spy on us."

Kodja knew that he needed her perspective. She would not have been his minister of security, otherwise. Somehow, though, it was always easier to listen to Grey Palmer than to the Ibizan. He made the required effort. "What do you recommend?"

"Officially, I recommend that inanu Halinchi file a formal complaint with the council reminding them that our borders are guaranteed by congressional charter, and that we reserve the right to take action against any violation of the border. Unofficially, we must do more than reserve the right, Alishat Hass-Kodja. We have to show them that we're serious."

"If we 'show them that we're serious,' Alta, we're only proving that they're right to be concerned about their own defense. Your organization has already provoked them."

Her head didn't move; her ears didn't flinch. "May I speak openly, sir?"

"Always. Al-keth nalkona høsniy rukhat." Truth comes from open speaking, as it had to. Another proverb. The creation of nakath-ruhkat had finally freed the dogs from the limited English their first masters programmed into them.

"Za kanyet nalkona al-rukhanja," the Ibizan countered: and I, myself, come from speakers. If she was proud of anything, it was that her line came from the same lineage that had produced Alrukhan, "the speaker"--one of the earliest figures in moreau independence.

She did not add that Alrukhan had died scant kilometers from where they now talked, well within the borders of the colony. According to Alta, what they called Terr Chanat, Memory Hill, had once just been 'Hill 261,' a meaningless geographic feature. Blood--moreau blood, including Alrukhan's--gave it its current name. Alta was too noble to use his memory as that sort of blunt instrument.

But the Ibizan did continue on in English. "Truth may be born of speech, Kodja, but change is born of action. The farms at Kir-K'daw--who owns them? We do. We own them because when the humans moved into our territory and set up camp, we chased them out. I chased them out, Kodja. They haven't come back."

"We paid restitution for the damaged property at Kodaw, too, remember."

"Your predecessor capitulated, is what you mean. You recognized that when you appointed me head of security. And since then, our borders have been safe. We hold Kir-K'daw, and the south bank of the Arkadiensee, and Salem, and the Kurghen Corsini. It should be obvious to you that the Jericho Business Council doesn't approve. Why? Why, Kodja?"

"I have my own opinions, inanu Alta, but I defer to yours."

"We have not crossed our borders. We have never exceeded the charter purchased by the Commonwealth forty-seven years ago. The humans have no reason to think we'd start. They can only be arming because they intend to take this land back."

Kodja sighed. And then, when it was clear she would stay silent until he answered, he asked the same question he'd posed to Levin. "When are you going to tell me the bad news?"

"What do you mean?"

His voice had been too weary to make any irony apparent. "What do you want to do, Alta? Other than fighting."

"We should respond in kind. I haven't asked for a larger budget in two years, Kodja, but it's time. The computer on your desk has a detailed request for a permanent six-percent increase, and a one-time outlay of four million obols. I can explain what I'd do with it, but I'm sure you'll want to review it with Levin on your own time."

"I suppose. Very well, Altalanuk; I'll consider the budget and I'll have Halinchi speak to the Council. Please continue to keep me informed."

"Of course." She stood, smoothed her uniform down, and started to turn towards the door.

"Alta. There is one final matter. You said the humans have no reason to think that we'd start pushing the colony's borders. They may not, but I remain disquieted. You are not to act beyond the colony, under any circumstance--not without talking to me first."

"I wouldn't think of it, sir."

At least he trusted her. "Speak honestly, then. Would you expand the borders?"

"Of course," the Ibizan repeated, at once and without shame. "It has to be done. If it were up to me we'd control the entire reach of the reservoir. And Terr Chanat. And the spaceport."

"Yassuja, Talla," he groaned. "You're out of your mind. You can't be heard saying that to anyone else."

"I wouldn't," she said calmly. "But you asked, Kodja. It's not paranoia, it's a simple reality. As long as they hold McKeever, they can keep us under blockade and communications blackout. From the north bank of the Arkadiensee any attacker could completely control the dam. With the dam captured, Ikashta is vulnerable. I can't prevent either as long as they command the north. And without holding Terr Chanat, the Corsini Slope is indefensible, and when the Kurghen Corsini falls we lose half the colony's land, Salem and everything else."

"It wouldn't be that bad, surely."

Her expression denied Kodja the benefit of self-deception. "It would. It will be. No, I don't discuss pushing the borders with anyone else. But nor will I lie. Truth, Kodja. Despite the saying, truth doesn't come from speaking openly--it is true, whether we admit it or not. And sooner or later, we'll have to."

***

Audra Station In orbit of Jupiter, Sol System

"You knew the answer to that question before you asked."

The human opposite her was unassuming in his jumpsuit; the chest patch bore the emblem of a Union-Mayflower Mining platform and passed muster even under close inspection. A fake, just like his name--she knew him as Bryant Freeman. Bryant grinned. "I was making small-talk."

"Don't. I'm here to repair your tug. Where is it?"

Bryant led her a dozen steps down to the airlock, opening it to the tiny ship on the other side. A standard cargo tug, mostly engines and structural supports. There was room in the cockpit for two people standing up--that was how they were controlled--and when she stepped inside, Bryant followed her.

"What's the problem?"

"Sticky control valve on the ventral thruster. It's all in the logs." She knelt down to access the system hatch. "It is true, though, isn't it? You were cashiered."

"Yes." Kashina started a diagnostic routine on the engine, which hummed to life. "We're good." Between the noise and the electromagnetic interference of the engine's test cycles nobody would get much out of eavesdropping.

"There's a shipment of metals headed for Eridania. They'll arrive in two weeks."

"What's the story?"

"Does it matter at this point?" Bryant caught her look and snorted. "Fine. Panoka Industries bounced an indie claim about two months ago. It belonged to someone with friends in fortuitous places. She says that she lost almost a million on the claim, plus damage to her own ship when she was chased off by Panoka mercs."

Kashina nodded, pretending to continue work on the engine. "Revenge?"

"More than that. It's a claim dispute. It should be handled by the Congressional Arbitration Panel. We've been complaining about Panoka sniping us for three years. They wait for an independent contractor to find something good, then muscle 'em off. Nothing stops them."

The dog detected variations on a theme she'd heard many, many times before. "So she went to her representative."

"Exactly," Bryant said; his grin was dark and sinister.

Congress administered the loose confederacy of territories and corporations that made up the Yucatan Alliance. As far as they were concerned, space stations and starships didn't count. You could live your whole, productive life on a deep-space rig, but for all Congress cared you were stateless.

The Starlight Faction advocated for those millions of Yucatec, many of whom had never been planetside, calling space their home. Officially, "advocacy" was all they did. But their leadership spoke from behind aliases, and their members were hidden, and when a space-dweller needed a particular kind of 'representation...'

"And I care about this because..."

"Look at the captain, if you're curious. Beyond that, you came highly recommended, and that's good enough. Besides, I pay well. Fifty thousand up front. You take it, the ship doesn't land on time at Eridania, and everybody's happy." He had the money on a secured chip, and Kashina took it with a quiet nod. And that was that.

MV Panoka Plymouth, the ship in question, took a slow path from Jupiter to Mars, courtesy of a few gravity transfers. She had no FTL drive; despite a three-week head-start it took precious little in time or money to find a starliner that would arrive well ahead of the freighter.

Kashina gave her name as 2C-442L-BIX to the starliner's purser, and submissively lowered the ears she was accustomed to keeping up and jackal-alert. There was no point in looking like trouble.

"Don't have berths," the purser said.

She looked behind him to the empty cabin. "None, sir?"

"None. Secondary hold."

She nodded; the gesture was unquestioning, even eager. And she wound up paying a standard fare for her space in the liner's cargo bay without arguing that point, either. The trip would be short--a day to leave Jupiter's gravity well and synchronize to Martian orbit; a day to deorbit and land after they made the jump. They didn't offer food and she didn't ask.

Her cover story raised no alarms. 2C-442L-BIX carried paperwork identifying her as a simple interdepartment transfer from a company on Audra to one on Mars. The papers said the company owned her liberty deed, and Kashina gave every indication of being a service dog: ears flat, tail tucked, eyes low.

She wasn't even the only moreau in the cargo hold. The container opposite hers--also marked 'LIVE CARGO'--held a pair of dark-furred felines. They didn't speak to her, and from their expressions Kashina figured they wouldn't answer her if she tried. Trimurti moreaus didn't do small-talk.

Much of the time they didn't talk at all. Trimurti designed them with a data link that let them connect directly to a computer--they could run the support systems of a space station or calculate an FTL jump all by themselves, much faster than Kashina could. And the link directly stimulated the reward centers of their brain, which kept them motivated.

And it kept them docile, when they weren't being used. Kashina knew that every Trimurti animal was a stable genius, more capable than any human being without any of their flaws--and she would've broken her own neck before trading places with one for even an instant. The dog avoided looking at their motionless silhouettes.

Instead she hunted for a vulnerability in the liner's communications array; despite the unease the cats provoked, she appreciated that they could've managed in seconds what eventually took her three hours. At last she was able to patch herself in to the radio, and from there to create a secure network connection.

There was research to be done. Nothing struck her as odd about the freighter itself, when she pulled up his records. But Bryant had mentioned the captain, one Stanislav Bradaschia, and when she cross-referenced his name with 'moreau' the first result pointed to an incident report published by the Interstellar Trade Commission.

Kashina guessed what she would find. She'd guessed something like that as soon as Bryant approached her. Sabotaging the Panoka Plymouth would be her dozenth job for the Starlight Faction, and her reputation had been established by the second of them. They did not seek her out for random acts of industrial destruction. They sought her out because they knew that, given the right motivation, she would do a small team's worth of work on her own initiative.

ITC Report 912733.52 Incident class: C

At UTC0640, 4/12/16, MV LIGHT NORMAN RICHARD issued a distress call indicating damage to ship's main reactor. AAI patrol vessel CAMBRIDGE responded at UTC1720 and agreed to render immediate aid providing an ETA of 12 hours. LIGHT NORMAL RICHARD_'s master Stanislav Bradaschia communicated that he would take additional measures to preserve the ship._

When the Cambridge arrived, eleven hours and fifty minutes later, nonessential systems aboard the freighter had been disabled. 'Nonessential systems' included life support for the cargo hold. Kashina didn't even need to speculate as to what the ship's manifest contained.

We conclude:

I. Lieutenant Commander Siebert and CAMBRIDGE responded quickly and effectively and could not have substantially expedited rescue operations; II. Ansbacher Dynamics acted negligently in failing to update Light Shipping on maintenance procedures as a result of SD-166.A. Implementation of this directive would have prevented the reactor situation; III. Light Shipping's standard training for reactor technicians did not cover simultaneous failures of both power limiting devices and the specific thermal condition providing erroneous readings to the sensors, but this eventuality had not occurred prior to the incident; IV. Light Shipping's new staffing policies meant reactor technicians were within .5hr/cycle of exceeding duty limits, but this was not a contributing factor;

Technical details, arcane and uninteresting. She kept reading.

XXI. The ship's master took appropriate action in the immediate response to the reactor malfunction; XXII. A 45-minute delay in sending the distress call was prompted by company policy requiring masters to evaluate other options before incurring the costs of a salvage operation, but this delay was not significant; XXIII. The decision to disable secondary systems, including cargo life support, despite abundant reserve power and generally accepted procedures, cannot be reasonably explained;

The clinical phrasing masked what had transpired to the cargo in question, although an appendix left little to her imagination. Based on the report, Bradaschia had been stripped of his license and found liable for substantial damages. She didn't know whether or not they'd been paid back, but the Light Norman Richard had been a behemoth on only her second voyage and captaining the Panoka Plymouth was an obvious demotion.

With her back to the bare, hard wall of the container Kashina turned the report over and over in her mind until the realization became clear and sudden. Starlight did not want the Panoka Plymouth disabled, particularly not near friendly tradelanes where its cargo might be easily salvaged.

No, they wanted her to destroy it. Bryant Freeman certainly didn't care about the captain's past--he wanted to send a message to Panoka about claim-jumping. Kashina was merely a convenient tool to get the job done: vengeance was a better motivation than money any old day. None of that bothered her, anyway.

And then she kept reading.

She had a plan together before even clearing the checkpoint at Eridania's spaceport--once more flattening her ears and mumbling obsequious, obedient apologies to the guards insulting her. Inside two days the hardware was ready; Freeman had given her a contact, and the contact was good. Reliable, she thought; she only had to hope that his network was just as trustworthy.

The engineer she found, in an industrial zone at the edge of the city, struck her as a compromise. He didn't ask questions about where she came from, and he didn't flinch when they met and she turned out to be a moreau, but a quarter of her payout had to disappear before he was willing to take on any work.

And even then, he required persuasion. "What have you got for me?"

She unfastened the locks on the case and popped it open. The engineer stared at it, then looked back at her suspiciously. "A mining probe?"

"Yes. I need it modified, though; I want the engine swapped with a Matador 20C."

"This wasn't designed for that," he said; as he did so he seemed to realize she would merely repeat the request for modification. "It'll take a new guidance module and probably some structural changes. And you'll lose half the maneuvering capability. Do I want to know what it's for?"

"I'm here on contract from a mining company. They have a need for probes that move fast, and they've found they aren't using all the propellant on their existing ones. We're just doing this as a test."

"'As a test,'" he echoed. "So I should fill the payload compartment with ballast?"

"Don't bother."

It made him uncomfortable--at the end of the negotiation, when he was rummaging around his parts him, she heard him mutter that he was done with those faction assholes--but she got what she wanted. And then it was a matter of waiting.

According to one of the marines she'd served with, 'waiting' was the hardest part of combat. On her first few assignments from the Faction, that had certainly been true. Over twelve of them, though, she'd gotten better about it; she booked a hotel room in Eridania City, requesting a view not of the skyline but of the landscape to its east.

"Not much to see out there," the front desk clerk told her. "Mostly emptiness. Some factories. The city view is a lot better."

"I don't like cities," she'd said.

To the naked eye, the Panoka Complex was merely a glittering drop of water perched at the horizon. Through binoculars, as a pot of water for tea bubbled behind her, Kashina could see the pressure dome itself, self-contained and separate from the newer version that shielded Eridania.

Panoka was one of the first companies to be born offworld, boasted the promotional material available on the 'net. As always, it was important to look beyond the corporate propaganda. The corporate propaganda did not, for example, say anything about their secondhand equipment sales.

As a mining company, they benefited heavily from cheap labor. Moreaus were easily trained, and loyal, and could be kept for only the cost of food. And officially, yes, they were valuable company assets and not to be treated poorly. Unofficially once you had decided it was possible to own someone, anything else was an irrelevant whitewash.

Panoka knew enough of whitewashing to keep their reselling of 'lightly damaged' moreaus limited to a front company with a plausible level of deniability. Kashina didn't know who the buyers would be--medical firms looking for subjects, most likely, but it wasn't as though the market was trivial. And not all buyers would concern themselves with asking why the moreaus didn't have official paperwork documenting their bloodline...

She poured herself a cup of Martian oolong and waited for it to cool. According to her computer, the MV Panoka Plymouth was now well along its reentry. She had all the technical specifications handy. A standard twenty-thousand ton bulk freighter--they called them "double-sawbucks"--one of the heavier transports that regularly made it to the surface and back.

When she turned her binoculars skyward, they properly identified the ship, moving on its landing trajectory as if on rails. In a sense it was; freighters like that flew an optimized path with no room for deviation. No artificial gravity, highly computerized control system to minimize crew requirements, engines designed for efficiency rather than thrust... everything had been geared to allow it to carry as much cargo as possible.

Even if her crew had time to notice the missile, three seconds of flight time gave them no opportunity to react, and its motor left no visible sign of the rocket. It struck exactly where she intended, just forward of the engine compartment, knocking out the links to the bridge and the auxiliary controls. Not that they'd be able to reach the auxiliary controls, either, in the time they had left--but she was leaving nothing to chance.

Inertia carried the Panoka Plymouth forward--only a thick trail of smoke and glittering debris suggested anything had changed. But then it was time for the ship to fire its landing thrusters... and nothing happened.

It smashed through the pressure dome of the Panoka Complex as though there had been no resistance at all: that was the last thing Kashina saw through her binoculars before the ship and complex alike disappeared in a flash, and then a roiling, bubbling gout of fire, flinging the composite and glass of the dome in all directions.

Smoke obscured everything that was left: where the ship had once been, where the Complex had stood, the straight road leading to it from Eridania. Kashina watched for half a second more, and then turned away.

Her tea was ready.

***

Emerson-Tata-Novaworx (ETaN) Complex, 50 km east of Davis Yucatec Jericho

"Name?"

"Grey Palmer. I'm on the visiting list."

The security guard at the post on the outside of ETaN, Grey thought, should've been reviewing some kind of army map instead of a guest list. A full suit of armor, helmet included, obscured all of her features. "ID," she barked.

Who do they think I am, anyway? Who do they think they are? Grey handed her identification card over, waiting for the guard to insert it into her computer so that she could begin her customary explanation. "It's a provisional certificate, I know."

"Why?"

"I have Yucatec citizenship but I don't live in a declared zone. I live up the road in Davis, in the Chartered Colony. The additional documentation is encoded on the card for your review. If you want."

And, of course, the guard 'wanted.' It was a lot of work to get into ETaN; Grey wondered if she might not've needed to plan an additional hour for her meeting. "You live with the animals?" the guard asked.

"Yes. I'm a consultant for them."

"Why?"

Because they're a lot less trouble than people like you. "It pays well," Grey lied. The Davis government gave her a room and a small stipend, which she supplemented with her savings from a previous career.

"But they're animals." The ETaN guard was still looking over her paperwork.

"I wanted to be a zookeeper as a girl."

The guard stopped, and raised her head, though Grey couldn't see anything behind the faceplate. "I don't have to let you in, you know. I could deny your request right here."

"I was asked to come here. I have a meeting. Do you think your boss will appreciate it if you cause trouble?"

"Wait here. Don't move."

A minute later, when Grey shifted her stance to lean against the wall of the guard shack, its occupant sternly repeated the order. It wasn't an entirely auspicious beginning to the day.

Why are they being so damned paranoid? Emerson-Tata-Novaworx's compound was small--no more than a few thousand people--and they were one of the minor players in the Jericho Business Council. It was what had brought her to ETaN to begin with.

Eventually a hoverdyne floated up silently--a late-model luxury vehicle, jet black, with opaque windows. A door melted seamlessly from its skin, and her contact stepped from it, making his way over to her at once.

"Please, accept my apologies." He offered her a hand, and she shook it without betraying any of the frustration that had been building for the previous quarter-hour. "I'm Rick."

"Mr. Tenney?"

"Yes. But please, Ms. Palmer: Rick. We're friends here."

"Grey," she agreed, and decided that she disliked him at once. He was the kind of person she knew all too well from thirty years of office work. Why lie to yourself? The kind of person that was the reason why you left it in the first place.

Nothing in their negotiations would matter. He'd give her whatever answers he thought she'd want to hear in person, then turn around and say the opposite to whoever wanted to hear that instead. The shiny, flawless suit he wore was modern business style: a long silk robe, tied off at the chest, and a fine metallic tunic beneath it.

So he made enough to afford the trappings of respectability, but fortune stranded him as vice-president of a minor campus on Jericho rather than the prestige he aspired to. Not competent enough for that, she judged, but probably too slick or dangerous to fire.

Rather than taking the hoverdyne back to the office, they walked. He apologized again for the delay, then pivoted smoothly to showing off the new business complex. The door to its glass lobby opened from nothing, just like the limousine's had. Inside the walls were covered in the glittering swirls of modern holographic art.

"Reproduced from Redburn?" Grey Palmer asked, knowing both the answer and that asking the question would put Tenney at ease.

"Commissioned," Rick answered. "Our sector vice-president absolutely adored the Tyrolean expo--do you like it? I told her that it was very... self-consciously 23rd-century."

"It's impressive," she said. By '23rd-century,' Rick meant that Vana Redburn designed the holograms to melt into the recesses and columns of the building, and that as the days and years went on it would subtly change to reflect them, hour by hour and season by season.

The kind of installation a consultancy business used to show that they were well-funded, modern, and cosmopolitan. Their knowledge made them trustworthy; their aesthetic sense made them worldly. "Thank you!" Rick ignored, or didn't acknowledge, her implicit disagreement with his judgment.

ETaN's complex was, all things considered, modern and inviting. Rick Tenney, despite his high position in the company, also put on an inviting front. In the end, watching her detached expression, he apologized for that, too.

"Pardon me if I seem excited. I'm only trying to be hospitable. We don't get too many guests," he added, pouring her a glass full of water and retrieving a small plate of cookies from a cubbyhole in the wall. "These were baked this morning, if you like white chocolate and macadamia. It's one of the cook's specialties. He's from Earth... a lot of us are. Accustomed to the finer things, I guess you'd say. Are you from Earth?"

"I was born in New Aspen, on Granrim." She took one of the cookies, broke it in half, and savored a bite. Might as well enjoy myself. "I haven't spent much time on Earth. Or even in that system."

"It does have some attractions. But then, Granrim has its own, too." She'd used the Terran variant, but he pronounced it natively: groon-rhyme. "I hear there's beautiful skiing and cloud-sailing in the equatorial islands. New Aspen is Microsoft, isn't it?" Rick had helped himself to a full cookie, but waited until she started speaking to begin chewing delicately on it.

"It is. I'm third-generation. My father and grandmother both worked in the arco."

Rick swallowed and took a sip of his coffee. "And you, too. Three decades, according to your dossier. Purchasing director for human resources equipment in the sector, if I remember correctly... I bet you have stories." She didn't rise adequately to the prompt, so he smiled disarmingly. "One of my colleagues worked on our account with you."

"With me specifically?"

"With Steven Le. Do you know Steve?"

Grey tilted her head. Steven went by his middle name, Roy. Not 'Steven,' and certainly not 'Steve.' "Steve reported to me, yes. I'd say I know him."

"ETaN designed the therapy package and equipment you give your transfer employees to adjust to different gravities. I hear it was an interesting project... a lot of complexity."

"You do similar things here, I take it?"

"Environmental planning for large indoor spaces. Quarantine filters, efficient thermoregulation, appropriate lighting... the land in Jericho was cheap, but it is, after all, the kind of work you can do almost anywhere."

"Was cheap. Now that other companies and countries are moving in, it must be seen as a good place to invest in. The kind of place you want to... protect."

"You're talking about your experience getting in here?"

"Yes."

He spread his fingers, palms down, and patted the table gently. "Right, that. Home office directed me to take additional security measures here, but I didn't know how much our new guards would be getting into it. They're contractors, of course; I think they live for that kind of thing. If I'd known they'd hassle you like that, I would've come earlier."

"I wouldn't have wanted you to leave your important meeting."

Rick gave no sign that she'd caught him in any kind of inconsistency. "Even still," he said levelly. His hands stopped moving. "Perhaps we can be forgiven? I want to get off on the right foot. Even though I only have two, instead of four."

"It won't be a problem." Grey had started to intuit that she'd do well to be more on her guard. Rick wasn't quite the simpleton she'd assumed. "Did you have a chance to review the proposal I sent you?"

"Yes. I wouldn't have accepted the meeting, otherwise."

"And?"

"We can't."

Grey nodded, betraying no more emotion than Rick had. It had not been a truly unlikely outcome. "Can I make our case again? Now that we're speaking in person, and I don't need to be so formal."

"If you like. We have plenty of time."

"I have two concerns, Mr. Tenney, which aren't reflected in the presentation. My first concern is cost. The municipal treasury covers the equipment, but if I may be frank, they don't have a good track record with capex budgeting and I expect overruns--as you know. You probably think the numbers are too conservative by a factor of thirty or forty percent."

"I trust your numbers. You're the one with the experience, Grey."

"Fine, then I think they're conservative. We could use a consistent revenue stream to defray the costs and the capitalization of the hardware. My bosses are civil servants, Rick; they don't think about that. I want investors. We need investors."

"I admit that this part didn't come through very clearly--you made it sound like we could lease bandwidth at cost."

"Yes, but that's better than nothing for the books. The second concern is non-economic, Rick. Most of the infrastructure here is old--everything at McKeever Spaceport is almost half a century out of date--and somebody has to upgrade it. If that's us, I don't see why we shouldn't extend access as a gesture of goodwill."

"Goodwill?"

"Moreaus have a strong sense of community. They believe in sharing. Maybe they've infected me a little bit."

"Or a lot, to hear you talk that way. You do see how it looks from my perspective, Grey... I hope you do, at least. If you wanted investment in your project, you could've gone straight to the council, or to one of the other companies with more money to throw at you and more need for the communications uplink."

"They also have existing contracts, and more hostility than I'm comfortable with."

"Understandable hostility. And if you've put that on the table, this looks to me like an attempt to draw us away from the council and closer to your influence. Obviously that would be a problem for us. The McKeever satellite connection serves our needs for now without any... political awkwardness."

"It's telling that you think it would be awkward. And speaking of which, wouldn't you agree it's a little worrying how tense the situation is becoming here? 'Additional security measures'--why?"

"Jericho has been a flashpoint before, though I suppose it predates both of us. By quite a lot," he allowed, quickly adding the caveat. "The Sanganese have started reintegrating their territory here, Marathi has an agricultural outpost on the southern continent, and..."

And. It was a strange answer; Grey didn't know if he intended for her to believe it. ETaN, even as a paranoid corporation, couldn't have been worried about fifty thousand Marathi on the other side of the planet. So: "And?"

"Will you make me say it?"

"Please."

Rick's smile turned faintly apologetic. "And we have your community in close proximity. It's true that we don't share a border as such, not directly, but as part of the Jericho Business Council I don't think that makes us immune. Are you going to say that you're not a threat? I could provide a litany of recent incidents suggesting the contrary."

"I obviously don't approve of those."

"I would never think of saying you did, Grey. I'm glad at least some of you are willing to disapprove."

"I'd go beyond disapproval to condemnation, Rick. So does the government. Administrator Kodja has been vocal about that. Nobody thinks that this problem is best solved through vandalism."

"Vandalism? Please, Grey, you make it sound like they're breaking windows. A Union mobile surveyor was set on fire two nights ago--I heard they'd been quoted almost two million obols for replacing that. If ETaN worked in extraction instead of software design, I would be 'hostile' to you, too."

She decided to tread carefully, but honestly. "Property damage, no doubt covered by UMM's insurance. And while I might condemn it, Rick, they were trespassing. Congress still recognizes Davis's land claims in the Chartered Colony, and Union-Mayweather doesn't have any transit rights."

"Those claims are disputed. Not by us, but..."

"Congress says they're valid. As much as I dislike vandalism--sabotage, fine--it hasn't gone beyond our borders."

If Rick found her defense of Davis's existence insulting, or problematic, he didn't say anything. His smile went back to being thin and meaningless. "We might agree to disagree. That said, I trust that you're being genuine. Let me return the favor, Grey. I know that nothing will happen, anyway... but I want to make it very clear to you, and to your superiors, that ETaN does not use or own any moreaus on this campus."

"Not that anything would happen, anyway."

The man's smile flickered. "No. But we don't. ETaN Industries does, on a few other sites--we have to, you know. There's no way to do consulting and data analytics without using moreaus, not if you want to be competitive, but we don't do it here and we intend no harm to your community."

"But you also intend no partnerships..."

"Of course not."

She finally took the other half of her cookie. "If you weren't willing to negotiate at all, a simple rejection would've sufficed. You didn't have to drag me through all of this mess."

"But I did. I wanted to meet you in person. Face to face."

"Why?"

His answer was dismissive, and by the time the meeting ended she didn't have a better sense of what he'd meant by it. When Levin heard that she was back in her office he came over to see her immediately.

Dogs, she found, were better at reading human emotions than she was at reading theirs; Levin knew immediately how the meeting had gone. "I was worried you'd have that face. Did they seem flexible at all?"

"No. And some of your activities have made things more difficult."

Levin's head cocked and he stared at her for a second. Then he burst out laughing. "Ah! No. The word you want is 'ahath,' Gerrich."

"What does 'hashadan' mean, then?"

The Border Collie grinned--this expression was easy enough to pick up. "It also means 'activity,' but a... particular sort of activity. Not the kind that is public."

On reflection, that hash meant 'to have' could've clued her in. Grey changed to English, anyway. "Well, some of you have been fucking things over. The person I met with specifically mentioned the surveyor incident."

"ETaN wasn't involved with that. It was a Union operation."

"They're still part of the council. It still worries them. I don't think we're going to get much traction as long as we can't..." Grey caught herself, then, with a sigh, said it anyway. "Keep the more aggressive citizens on a tighter leash."

"Kodja would like to agree, Gerrich, but... yassuja. Ala nalhashillka nalja ena."

You must have patience when dealing with pups. "Patience is one thing, Levin," she said, without reverting to his own language. "But if we can't find a way to deal with them, we're going to continue having problems with our neighbors."

Grey knew that she was, in human parlance, preaching to the choir. The equivalent nakath phrase, 'snarling at a bared throat,' seemed if anything more appropriate. She promised to keep Levin updated on her remaining meetings and went home for the night.

A message was waiting on the private communicator she kept in her apartment. Rick Tenney wanted to talk to her, over a secured line. Any time of day or night, he said. It doesn't matter when you get home.

Warily, she entered the link information he provided. A minute later, he appeared on the communication screen, as polished and put-together as he'd been at their meeting. "Good evening, Grey."

"Hello. Can I help you?"

"I wanted to clarify some details about our talk earlier today. I hope you didn't take away the wrong impression."

"I didn't have much of an impression, Rick. Our negotiations didn't go anywhere; that's all I needed to know."

He smiled, and nodded. "Yes, yes. Of course. But those were our negotiations with you as a representative of your... your friends. There is a different kind of negotiation, which as a knowledgeable, shrewd businesswoman I'm certain you can appreciate."

"Can I?"

"ETaN could use someone with your experience. Your unique history with the dogs gives you a perspective that we would appreciate. If you'd be interested in becoming a consultant for us, we could pay you quite well."

Grey hoped her image was too low-resolution to show any emotion. "I already have a job."

"You do. I wouldn't ask or imply that you should leave it. This would purely be a supplemental contract, as long as you wanted it to be. And if you should want more... if, for example, tensions rose to the point you felt uncomfortable in Davis, we'd certainly assist you."

"If you're saying that, you understand the conflict of interest it would raise."

Rick smiled an empty, genial smile. "You should never do something you're uncomfortable with, Grey. I wouldn't dream of asking you to question your loyalties--you must know them very well. Perhaps, instead, let me say this. If you ever wanted to come back here, and have some more cookies, and... discuss your perspective on the situation, it's the kind of discussion I could arrange to be very profitable, indeed."

"I understand your meaning," she said; nothing further.

"I trust that you do. Goodnight, Miss Palmer."

***

Corsini, 25 kilometers north of Davis Chartered Colonial Jericho

Altalanuk chose to hold her meeting in Corsini deliberately; she'd also conducted the previous strategic review there, back when she thought it vaguely possible that the colony could hold its own against whatever the Jericho Business Council might throw at them. The operational plan they'd put together then involved concentrating their forces around the Ikashta and Corsini to check any human advance.

It always came back to Corsini. The town was not, by itself, important. It had a population of under two hundred, and most of them were farmers and shepherds, tending land off to the west. The west was not the Ibizan's concern. To their north, Terr Chanat rose on the horizon; the hill was a human possession, and turned Corsini into one of their closest borders to the corporations.

Once the hill had been a Sanganese military base. When they abandoned it, the territory and equipment was transferred by treaty to new corporate owners. She didn't know what purpose it now served and her attempts to find out had been frustrated.

Alta did not frustrate easily; none would've called her 'sanguine,' but her level-headedness had been honed over years of practice. Corsini would take the brunt of whatever Terr Chanat held. It was logic that brought her there, and logic that told her to start the session with an admission of brutal honesty.

"We need to update our plans. And we need them to be pessimistic."

Around the table, which had been used for picnics in long-ago decades when the Corsini Plain was parkland, were her four commanders and a few select members of her senior staff. And an outside observer, there by her invitation, watching the proceedings silently. Colonel Genakhot, who led the Third Battalion, raised his voice first. "Do we have reason to be pessimistic?"

"Several. It is increasingly clear that the Jericho Business Council is arming their own militia--that is one reason. We cannot depend on support from the Colonial Defense Authority in case the council attacks us--that is another reason. And the administration has declined to approve new budget for us. That is a third."

"Do we not have the money, or do we not have the will?" Kalasos, a younger mixed-breed, had quickly proven herself one of Alta's most capable subordinates. The major was responsible for their intelligence, and superlative at that kind of analysis. She had not yet learned, however, to hold her tongue.

"It's not for us to question, Kalla. I intend to appeal the decision through the proper channels. Until then..." She reconsidered how much they would benefit from knowing. "Very well. I trust you, after all; some honesty is in order. Kodja believes that overt rearmament will be taken as a threatening gesture, instead of one meant to safeguard our own security."

It did not mean that she would not arm them. Alta had her own resources, not insubstantial, but acting without official sanction added its own hidden costs. The cost of finding reliable middle-men, and smugglers who wouldn't ask the wrong questions. Small arms would cost half as much again--heavier weaponry would double, or triple. When it could be found at all.

They burned through their stocks of ammunition quickly, because Altalanuk trained the Defense Committee hard, and with live rounds wherever it was possible. Even then, admitting that they couldn't expect more funding from the administration, she told them that she wanted the exercises stepped up in frequency.

Nobody protested; they'd find a way to make it happen, as they always did.

At the moment the Defense Committee consisted of just over a thousand men and women--the ones she could keep fully armed. In theory Alta was responsible for the colony's police force, too, but even in Davis crime alone wouldn't have required more than a handful of chaperones to keep the pups out of trouble. The few hundred policemen were part of the DC, and the only part officially recognized by the government.

Most of the Ibizan's time was occupied beyond police work. There were more volunteers for the DC than Alta could retain, though not more than she wished to employ. She rotated them through active service, four months at a time; by the Ibizan's best estimates another two thousand reliable soldiers could be called up if necessary.

But they only had small arms for fifteen hundred men, and two weeks worth of ammunition. Despite her faith in the Defense Committee, her battle plans had to take that into consideration, too. The DC had no powered armor, no mechanized units, no air power...

"No artillery, no C&S trucks, no walkers, no C3..."

One of the Ibizan's offworld friends had put her in contact with Chanatja, the white shepherd now speaking. They were alone; she'd split the others into small teams and asked them to work on coming up with a new plan to defend the colony. "Not... quite true. We have some indirect fire."

Chanatja was retired now, after three decades in the Colonial Defense Authority's ground-mobile division. He had agreed to come and offer advice to Altalanuk, and though she knew she had to appreciate it the truth of the assessment stung. He did not back down. "Seventeen mortars with twenty unguided rounds apiece," the shepherd said. "Even charitably, ma'am, it is less an army than an oversized sheriff's posse."

"It's not as bad as that. Most of them have at least some combat experience. Half of the rest are Spartoi or... worse."

"Terrorists," the white shepherd muttered. "But I guess when they're on your side they're supposed to be called 'partisans.' Is it valuable experience?"

"Explosives. Sabotage. Covert operations. The Spartoi may not be licensed mercenaries, but they're effective in their own way. By numbers they're in good shape: competent, dedicated, smart. Fearless."

"I have seen them before, jananga. In familiar scenery, at that."

"You haven't."

She knew Chanatja had fought in the Jericho campaign that first carved out the colony, forty years earlier. And from her studies, she knew there had been moreau auxiliaries--little more than a militia. Undisciplined rabble, and as brave as they'd been they didn't account to much in the grand scheme of things.

"As I said, most of them have seen fighting before--a lot of it. You know as well as anyone that CODA doesn't exactly pick easy fights for us. Jericho, for example. Jericho could not have been easy. I've read about it."

"And you know that with heavy armor, and air support, and the high ground, we almost lost Terr Chanat. One for one, we were definitely better than what the Sanganese were fielding, and I bet my old mech is still somewhere in those woods."

They'd passed a few derelicts on the drive from Davis; even more lurked in the forests and fields around Corsini and Terr Chanat. Too heavy and too worthless to move, the nakath farmers simply tended their crops around them, leaving the broken hardware as its own silent memorial. "You lost a Jackal here?"

"A Jackal, and our driver. Sixty percent of my company was a casualty, Altalanuk--there must be thirty or forty Rooijakkals out here rusting. My point is that the 55i could take on a dozen Sanganese hoverdynes and come out on top. We were better equipped than our opponent. You're not. And you're not looking to defend one single fortification, you want to hold this colony. What's your plan?"

Sobered, she pulled out the projector with her current plan programmed into it. "For what it's worth?"

"For what it's worth."

Alta tossed the projector to the ground, and brought up a map of the area in the space between them. "We'll lose. Don't worry, sergeant, I'm not that stupid. We'll concentrate on the dam--we can make them pay for that, but we can't hold it for more than two or three days. After that, another day or two at Corsini. My hope is that we can inflict enough casualties to make them reconsider."

Chanatja nodded. "House-to-house fighting Davis will be bad for them, too. But they won't be worried about collateral damage."

"That's my fear. I figured I would ask you for a second opinion."

"You're wildly optimistic. They'll overrun the dam on the first day. Your only chance with this strategy is to retreat south of Ikashta and hold them in the middle valleys. For a few days."

Her yelp was indecorous, but from her point of view entirely warranted. The statement went passed sobering into insult. "South? Yassuja--there's four thousand nakath between Corsini and Salem! We can't just give them up."

"You can't defend them, either. The reality is that the Commonwealth is fifteen kilometers wide at its narrowest point. They'll cut you in half whether you like it or not. The old base on that hill commands this entire plain."

"Do you have a recommendation, in that case?"

"Leave. Find someplace unsettled--there are lots of planets in this galaxy that don't have other eyes on them."

"There are, but none of them are this one. This is home."

"Your home, perhaps."

"No. Our home. I'll die here, Chanatja. Hopefully, that'll be many years from now. If necessary, it'll be tomorrow. Running away is no longer an option."

"Fine." Chanatja looked, rather pointedly, towards the slopes of Terr Chanat. "In the long term, it doesn't matter. You'll lose, as you said. You can buy time. Maybe if you hold out long enough they'll want to spare everyone the spectacle of a drawn-out fight. Against a well-armed opponent, in the end..."

"I know."

"You need heavy weapons. Anti-air and anti-armor rockets, in particular. You might not be able to even the odds, but you could make it harder for them to recklessly come after you. Every time they have to think twice, that's a few minutes you don't have their gunships on you."

"I'm trying, but with trade being controlled through McKeever Spaceport the Jericho Business Council knows exactly what we're moving in and out of the colony. They'd get suspicious, and fast. But I'm trying."

"Good. Vehicles, too... your own armor. You can't maintain Jackals, but you might be able to use tread jobs or modded 'dynes. You'll need the mobility. You have to knock out Terr Chanat in the first thirty-six hours. Hold that, and they can be trapped east of Corsini... at least until they bomb you into the next world."

The shepherd said it ignorant of the greater political context, and Altalanuk didn't want to explain it to him. Kodja would not permit the Ibizan to come to him with a battle plan that proposed taking the offensive. He might even relieve her of her responsibilities.

But she couldn't deny Chanatja's logic. The plan, which they worked out over the remainder of the afternoon, stayed with her. She could only hope that they wouldn't have to see it tested.

****

Eridania Mars, Sol System

Even from inside the hotel lobby the blare of sirens was deafening. Kashina flattened her ears, tucked her tail, and slunk over to the concierge. "Sir? What's--what are all the sirens?"

"Go back to your room," the man ordered sternly.

"But--"

"Your room," he repeated. She stole back, out of sight, and trained her keen ears for the next person to approach his counter. "How may I help you, miss?"

"What's going on? We heard an explosion--is the pressure dome safe?"

"There's been an accident at the Panoka Complex. Eridania is safe, but the city's on lockdown. They're trying to figure out exactly what happened now, but you'll be fine here. I recommend that you return to your room until we know more."

"My husband and I have a flight in the afternoon, back to Earth. We..." Kashina could just imagine the woman's face falling as something in the concierge's expression told her otherwise.

"Departing spacecraft will be held, I'm sure. Please, return to your room. Or--or, yes, why not try the spa on the second floor? Take this pass, they'll let you in. With our compliments, miss. And I'll have more information on your flight sent to your room directly."

For the next ten minutes, the man repeated that there'd been "an accident" at the complex. Then it evolved to "a crash," and that lasted only ten more minutes until the lobby buzzed with rumors that the freighter had been brought down deliberately.

Kashina considered this an unlucky break; the truth would've come out eventually, but she'd picked a rocket with no radar signature and no exhaust plume. Her firing location had been well-concealed; unless somebody had been watching a routine transport flight very, very carefully they shouldn't have known until investigating thoroughly.

It was time to make her escape. She grabbed her satchel from the hotel room and made her way onto the street, where the din of sirens had dimmed but an ominous, thrilling column of smoke dominated the sky.

Lockdown. A formality; Eridania couldn't afford to hold traffic indefinitely. The first VIP transports would start moving again by the next morning. Freighters might take a little longer, but with perishable goods aboard and the economy of the city at stake they'd be on their way soon enough, and so would she.

Her planetside contact--perhaps the cell leader; she hadn't asked--ran a dry cleaning shop. It was empty when she showed up, and he looked like he'd been expecting her. "Somebody's been causing trouble."

"Enough, yeah. It's time for me to leave, though. Just need a ship and I'll be out of your business."

"Probably not."

"What do you mean?"

"Police bulletin said they're looking for a dog. A lone bitch trying to get offworld in a hurry is gonna raise a bunch of red flags."

"Looking for one?" Her eyes narrowed and her lip curled. "Why?"

"Because somebody tipped them off."

Kashina's sharp growl belied the fury she managed to suppress. "What do they know?"

The man crossed his arms over his chest. "You want me to get involved in this mess?"

"I did this for you!"

"You 'did this' for money. I'm Spartoi, dog; you're just an independent contractor." He stayed quiet until deciding that she wasn't about to be stared down. "They got an anonymous report from a source that was asked to build a missile for them. Apparently when the freighter crashed, this source's conscience got the better of them."

"Fuck. It must've been--"

"Don't bother with names."

"Your cell recommended him."

"I didn't say who it was," the man answered levelly. "I have my own suspicions. One of our less-reliable engineers seems a likely candidate, but he didn't answer a page sent to his office." The man paused, enunciating word by stern, cold word. "He will not answer any further pages."

"Do you know what the police know?"

"They know it was a dog. Nothing further, and no description, but they'll have pulled the transit logs. You came here clean, didn't you? They'll run a trace on that file--how good is it?"

Good enough to pass quick inspection at an in-system security checkpoint, but nowhere near good enough to stand up to intensive scrutiny. Kashina growled, more quietly. "Can you get me a new ID?"

"One that can get you past security at the main terminal? How much money do you have? Don't bother--the answer's 'not enough.' I can get you something, but it's up to you to find a way out."

"You're cutting me loose."

"Considering the heat you've brought down on us? Yes. I'm not without regards for loyalty, dog--that's why you're still alive and your confederates aren't--but there's no way we can get our hands dirtier than they already are."

He left her for a few minutes, pondering her fate, and returned with a jacket. He made a show of checking the claim ticket, and handed the thing--military surplus, and a size too large for her--across the counter. "Left pocket. Burn your current paperwork. Burn everything you have."

"Sure."

"And get out. Try the Cave, two levels below the recycling complex on Terpsichore."

"Alright."

"Between us, good work. They had it coming. But officially..."

Officially, get out. Terpsichore Street, in the run-down industrial sector that was the oldest remaining part of Eridania, was an hour's walk. She could feel eyes boring into her--skeptical eyes. Paranoid eyes. Hateful.

She hated them back, but it wouldn't do to say that. The ID card in the jacket's left pocket was made out for a different moreau's serial number and a different occupational background. Junior climatological economics analyst. Not like Martian weather really demanded much of that; it was all controlled.

Just another bit of hassle. The Cave--Cave Canem, converted from an old meat locker--was a tavern, of sorts. There were no humans inside, and no human languages being spoken. Maybe the Starlight representative had figured she'd be able to find kindred spirits.

Kashina didn't spend time in bars on her own initiative; moreaus had a reputation for being easily susceptible to alcohol, and she didn't fancy her odds at resisting the temptation. Given the opportunity, there were more than enough things she could forget. Better to find answers for them, instead.

The bartender made no objection when she ordered a bottle of water and a basket of jerky. She wouldn't have been the only one staying sober, nor the only one taking out their tension in worrying the cured meat.

"A long day, jananga?" he finally asked.

"Hasn't it been for everyone? From all the commotion outside, I certainly would've figured so."

"True, yes. Longer than most. You're not from Mars, not with that accent--have you been here long, or was today your first exposure to our culture?"

Before she could answer, a husky leaning against the bar growled his way into the conversation. "Culture? Some culture. I heard they're accusing one of us for taking out that starship... that's our culture."

"Good," Kashina said. She hadn't been able to help herself. So long as she was committed, though, there was no turning back. "Maybe one of us did. Finally."

The husky had gotten hung up on the first word. "Good? They said--said the whole complex is leveled. They're saying there could be hundreds dead! Maybe more, even. It's hard enough living here without being accused of murdering innocent people."

Catching sight of her raising hackles, the bartender spoke up carefully. "It is a hard life, Goren, but Panoka has never been a friend of ours. They wouldn't have hired any free moreau."

"They wouldn't have to," Kashina said. His intervention had bought her time to calm down from the outburst that rose in her muzzle, but it hadn't stilled her anger. "Innocent? Ukokhda. They have no concept of it. They wouldn't hire us because they buy and sell us--they breed us, and dump us in bulk when we've outlived our utility. I'm sure there are carpets made of our fur and their innocence."

"Breeding is illegal for private corporations," the husky muttered. "You're telling tales."

"Breeding is illegal for patented, unlicensed stock. They forked their own lines thirty years ago when their CTO happened to be on a congressional subcommittee to approve it. Panoka runs it through a front company--for some reason they're not proud of putting their fucking innocence on display." She used the human profanity, and it jerked the husky's ears back. "If there's balance in the universe, that whole complex is unsalvageable."

"If they think we're terrorists, they'll never accept us."

"They don't accept us as lapdogs, either," she rumbled. "I don't understand how you can defend them."

"Because I have to live here! I have to live with them. We have to share this galaxy with them! They... yes, I'm sure Panoka wasn't perfect, but--"

"Not perfect? They--" A paw on her shoulder cut the dog's argument off into a startled snarl. She turned to find a grizzled, grey-muzzled Rottweiler staring her down. "What do you want?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes."

"To keep you from being thrown out. I have the feeling that there aren't many other places for you to go."

"Is that a particular concern of yours?"

The Rottweiler shrugged. "It might be. I don't have a reason to want you coming to harm, after all. Come, jananga, let's find someplace else to talk about this." She caught the bartender's nod, suggesting she might do best listening to him.

In a corner table, she popped another piece of jerky into her muzzle and stared at him. "Are you going to tell me we should all get along?"

"No. I get the impression that you've tried that before, jananga." He had a calm voice, and when he used the word jananga--'my friend'--she did not immediately disbelieve him. "More than just a data dog. You were in CODA, maybe? One of the other PMCs?"

"For a few years, yes. Among other things, it's where I learned that we cannot just... get along. Not that simply."

"Why did you leave? It's a story, obviously. You still carry yourself like a soldier."

Kashina opened her mouth to ask whether or not he really cared. The question died away unvoiced. "It's not much of a story. Neither complex nor... pleasant."

"They don't have to be," he said.

"It was a corporate squabble on one of the outer worlds; nothing too special. CODA came in to help an agricultural collective when some independent group started going after their soybeans. The indies had bigger guns than we planned for, and the corp didn't want to pay for more firepower so we agreed to cover them while they packed up and left. You can guess where the rest of it ends."

"They didn't have space for their labor?"

"Not valuable. KMT jobs, I think, 1C or below; they were just good for menial work, anyway, not really verbal. I refused to participate, even when the corporation agreed to put them down chemically rather than just throwing them in a furnace. I got a direct order to help. Instead I borrowed a Tarvos and drove it through the wall of the main office."

"You were put on trial? A court martial, that's what they call it, right?"

"It wasn't the kind of thing that was going to get them good publicity. They just discharged me. I told you it wasn't complicated, but I figured I'd spare you the details."

He nodded. "If there are details beyond that to spare me from, I'd rather you did. That's what brought you into this line of work, is it?"

"Eventually, yes. I hadn't picked up many other salable skills. What about you? You weren't in the service, from the sounds of it."

"No, never. I earned my liberty deed more... prosaically. My company went bankrupt and I wasn't worth retraining. There's a human saying about old dogs and new tricks..."

"Humans say a lot of things."

He nodded; it wasn't the sort of nod that suggested disagreement. "That's been my experience, too. Perhaps you're right, chijukun; perhaps they deserve what's coming to them." The word he used meant 'hunter'; he didn't have to say explicitly that he knew who she was for his next statement to gain some added weight. "They won't let you off the planet. Not now."

"I've been in spots like this before. This isn't my first time."

"And before, you had the Starlight Faction supporting you. They won't do that now, after what happened. They won't condemn it, but they'll need to be staying quiet, too. I'm sure you did good work, but you can be sacrificed."

Kashina didn't feel confident enough in her disagreement to protest. "Are you just telling me this is the end of the road?"

"Can I see your paperwork?" It seemed to be the end of the road; she didn't have an especially good reason not to listen to him. He looked the card over, then pulled out a computer to scan it more thoroughly. "It's a decent forgery. I can get you off-world--not on a chartered liner, though, and not to a Yucatec colony."

"Where? One of the enclaves?"

"Sort of. Jericho--do you know it?"

Kashina did, of course, though not as a destination she would've willingly chose. "Older than Dawa. Not the only settlement on the planet."

"No. It's the oldest moreau community that I know of. They're larger than Dawa or Hana Lanja, and mixed--mostly nakathja, but about a third KMT and a few Trimurti refugees for good measure. They could use good citizens."

"I'm not a good citizen," Kashina pointed out. "Given the circumstances we're meeting under."

"Not conventionally, maybe, but I think you'd fit in. You'll find sympathetic ears. And a home."

"I've tried to find home a half-dozen times before, jananga. Starlight was number seven."

He smiled. "Maybe eight will be your lucky number. Do you think you have another choice?"

"I'm not sure. No." Kashina sighed. "What do I owe you for this?"

"Nothing, except that I'd like you to try to make a good attempt of it. Tell them when you get there that I sent you. Djanesh--I'm a recruiter, of sorts."

"Kashina," she introduced herself, at last. "They need a recruiter?"

"You'll see."

***

Karlself Mutually Guaranteed Neutral Zone, Jericho

The cat facing Alta grinned, but the contrast of white teeth on his inky fur was immensely unsettling. "This is the part where I'm supposed to say that I shouldn't ask what you want these for."

Similar meetings, Alta told herself, were taking place throughout the spaceport at Karlself, in the Mutually Guaranteed Neutral Zone along Jericho's equator. Some of the buyers would be looking for drugs, or counterfeit goods--or worse. At least she wanted nothing like that. "Is it?"

"It should be." Alta had heard that feline moreaus tended not to have a sense of humor; she couldn't decide whether the cat, Mara, was evidence for or against that theory. "Would you like me to?"

"Not really."

His grin disappeared as quickly as it had flashed into existence. "The Yaprumash frames can be declared as industrial assets, and I have reliable sources for transfer certificates that won't be questioned. Heavy armaments will be more difficult."

"We have the right to own them."

Mara shook his head. "The colony might, but you're not buying them for the colony, are you? As an individual, it's more difficult, but in any case, Alti, the problem isn't getting them here--it's getting them here without tipping your hand."

"Can you do it?"

The cat nodded immediately. "Yes. But it will either take time, or it will take money. I estimate the chances are sixty percent that the corporations attack before the year is out. You'll want an opportunity to train with the equipment. Do you trust me enough to make a recommendation?"

"No," the Ibizan admitted, though she suspected the admission would only endear herself more to the cat, who had already begun calling her 'Alti.' "I don't have a choice, though, do I?"

Indeed, a smile ghosted back across his dark muzzle. "Let me talk to some of my contacts outside congressional authority. If we bring them in through third parties, it'll be easier for you. And for me," he added. "I would pass the savings on to you."

On the suborbital flight from Karlself to McKeever Spaceport, Alta ran over the numbers. Twenty-six Model 450 'industrial tractors,' from the Yakutsk-Transural Machineworks, were--as Mara noted--the easiest to justify. It happened that the Yaprumash-450s shared a frame with a common main battle tank, but if one didn't look too closely...

Equipping the 450s with proper armament increased the cost of each one by a factor of five, and that entailed sacrifices in the quality of the weaponry. Then again, what was the saying? Quantity has a quality all its own. It was better than nothing--and Mara said he could get them to her quickly.

Even with the savings he promised, purchasing the equipment from the cat cost most of her budget. She wasn't only thinking in monetary terms: goodwill was a finite resource, too, and explaining what she'd done to Kodja would be expensive.

She was planning what to tell him when her communicator alerted her to a new message. Kalasos and one of her subordinates were waiting at the DC headquarters; Alta pulled on her uniform jacket and went to see what the matter was.

One piece of good news after another. If only I could be like Kodja. The bitterness of her own thoughts surprised the Ibizan. I can't quit, anyway, so what's the point of complaining? Let him focus on the water supply and the streetlights and the sanitation budget.

It was something she said over and over to the others on the Defense Committee, who chafed at what they viewed as a lack of appreciation for what they did. Our job is to make sure that the administrators can concern themselves with the schools. We keep them safe. Remember that.

Kalasos was working at a computer terminal. She had her jacket off; the dog's sleeves were rolled up over marbled grey-blue fur and her right paw clasped a coffee thermos. When Alta entered, she and her companion stood at once. "Ma'am. Sorry for disturbing you this late."

"At ease. It's fine."

Kalasos nodded to the man next to her, a dark shepherd whose grey-muzzle added two decades to his otherwise young frame. "Captain Shan Alsher is a new member of Khinushat Battalion."

"It's an honor to meet you, ma'am," the shepherd said. "I wish it was under better circumstances. One of our patrols picked up another incursion, three kilometers off-road to the east of Corsini. Colonel Ishiri sent me here to ask for orders."

"Major Kalasos, what's going on?"

The mixed-breed turned back to her computer. "In consideration of our ROE, they approached no closer than half a kilometer. We have passive surveillance and recon drone footage, though... we're looking at two vehicles, a surveillance truck and what appears to be some drilling equipment."

"Drilling equipment? They can't be wanting to take core samples in the woods, can they?" Alta frowned at the images as Kalasos cycled through them, one at a time. "They're installing listening devices?"

"I think so, yes. They don't want to be found--there's some cloaking devices active. They're not military grade, but it's enough to make the signals very difficult to interpret without being able to parse their encryption. They've stopped twice in the last hour, probably to set up whatever they're doing."

The Ibizan growled under her breath, taking control of the mutt's computer. "They're a full fifteen hundred meters on our side of the border. Then again, if they were on their side, the monitoring gear wouldn't be able to look down on Kurghen Corsini--this has to be deliberate. I suppose we'll tag and remove them when they leave."

"We can identify where they've placed three devices, but according to Captain Shan Alsher, the patrol closest to them estimates they must've been here for an hour or two before being detected."

"Colonel Ishiri is ready to move or to withdraw, ma'am, but requires orders. He didn't think this was safe to transmit over the air."

"Perhaps not. Wait outside, captain." The shepherd gave a brisk nod and excused himself, leaving Alta alone with Major Kalasos. "What is the likelihood they can intercept our communications these days?"

"They probably can't decode it. But they would be able to tell the increased traffic. It wasn't an imprudent measure, especially if we want to maintain the element of surprise when we attack them."

"When?" Alta shook her head. "Major, I'm under strict orders from Administrator Kodja that we're not to undertake reprisals."

"I understand that, ma'am." Kalasos looked away from the Ibizan, back to where her computer screens marked the intrusion into their territory. "You could ask him?"

"I'll send him a message, but he won't understand the urgency, I don't think. He wants to keep this from escalating." Alta thought about what she'd just said, and lowered her ears a few degrees. "I want to keep this from escalating, too, if we can."

"'If' is the important qualification. May I point out something else, ma'am? We only know where a few of those monitors are. Searching for the others--if there are others--could take weeks. If we had access to their equipment, we could know for certain where they were, and what they were doing."

"Somehow, major, I don't think they'll consent to a police stop." Kodja would not be happy, but that was out of her control. Nothing could make the retriever happy; he wanted the impossible.

She knew what she had to do; mollifying Kodja, if it could be done at all, would have to come later. The best she could manage was taking ownership of the decision that needed to be made. Altalanuk summoned Captain Shan Alsher back into the room.

"Tell Colonel Ishiri the ROE no longer applies. Those two vehicles don't leave our borders. I want them captured intact if possible, with the crews alive. If that's not possible, destroy them, but they're not to leave. He needs to move now. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am. Attack the intruding vehicles at once and don't permit them to escape."

"It needed to be done, ma'am," Kalasos reassured her. "We can't keep giving up ground. If we let them get away with it, they'll only push their luck further and further."

"Where does it stop? If there are casualties, the corporations will demand restitution. We have to hope that's all they demand."

"It will be." Major Kalasos headed the intelligence section; it was her job to make such pronouncements, and Altalanuk wanted to be able to trust her. Still, she was aggressive. The mixed-breed clearly wanted to be in a combat unit again, though her eyesight had never recovered from the injuries that retired her from CODA to begin with. "We can afford to pay the blood money, ma'am, if it means they learn their lesson."

"Indeed. Will they?"

***

Colonial Administration Building Davis, Chartered Colonial Jericho

"Dismiss her. She has to go."

"Inanu," Kodja began, but Halinchi wasn't having any of it.

"She has to." Halinchi, KMT badger stock, spoke their tongue not much better than Grey Palmer did, and understood none of the nuance in Kodja's placating body language. Their foreign minister carried on in English: "I can't go back to the business council until that's taken care of."

"They've complained already?" Grey asked.

Kodja had called the meeting with Grey and Halinchi; Levin accompanied Palmer, and while politics wasn't the Border Collie's greatest strength Kodja allowed him to stay because he wanted his unflappable perspective. Levin's voice was quiet. "How could they not?"

"Four dead humans, Kodja," Halinchi repeated. "And two vehicles destroyed. They've gone to the sector ecclesia with an official grievance. This could give Congress a mandate to rescind our claims to the land."

"You are, perhaps, overstating that case," Kodja said, still trying to pacify her. "The claim has held for more than four decades, and this isn't the first altercation."

"They're angry. I don't blame them--we'd be angry, too."

"We should be angry." Levin's voice was still soft, almost emotionless. Having spoken in defense of the humans, he added an identically calm one to their own colony. "You have read Altalanuk's report of the incident. The humans were armed, and within our borders, showing clear hostile intent."

"'Hostility' is paranoia," the badger insisted. "Their hostility is that our security forces opened fire on them."

"Opened fire on foreign trespassers, carrying weapons, in a sensitive area," Kodja repeated what Levin had said, hoping it might sink in. "That ought to warrant a complaint to the ecclesia, too. Have you drafted one?"

"None of us are dead, Kodja! I told you after my last meeting with the council that we had to control our vigilantes--this is not de-escalation. How can I do my job if we can't even stick to our promises?"

Kodja sympathized with the badger; even more than Alta, she had a difficult job. Both of them kept the colony secure, after their own fashion, and for both of them it was against substantial odds. "I wish to point out that, while I don't condone violence, sanctioning the Defense Committee has done nothing to reduce the council's repeated violations of our border."

"And we could negotiate on that--but not when we're shooting them! This is how wars start, Kodja. Is Alta ready for that? Did she tell you she was? Are you ready for it?"

"No. I'm not. What do you want me to do, inanu Halinchi? What do you want me to do when the business council is sending military vehicles across our border? How do you think they'd respond if it was us?"

"As a human--maybe not a very good one," Grey Palmer conceded. "It is an openly hostile act. I don't see how it can be read as anything other than provocation. It wouldn't surprise me if, according to some technicality, they could justify everything, but even still, it clearly wasn't done innocently."

Halinchi gritted her teeth and wouldn't speak until, finally, he sent the others from the room. "I can't do my job like this, Kodja."

"Altalanuk says the same thing."

It was only after her derisive snort had started to die away that the badger caught herself, apparently deciding that it might not have been the most respectful answer. "When Altalanuk doesn't like her job, she can just blow something up, and unless you'd like me to begin doing the same, it's not remotely comparable."

Halinchi's tenure as foreign minister--the job really amounted to maintaining their relationships with everyone else on the planet--predated Kodja; he had been only a pup when she started work. Better times, before the humans started to return. "I don't want you to start blowing anything up, Halinchi."

"Well, it's going to come to that."

She'd spoken in the heat of the moment; he didn't take it seriously. "My job is the safety of the alenakoshja, Halinchi." He used the informal name for the moreau residents of Jericho--the ones who had heard 'al-kosh,' the colony's siren song. "Sometimes that means... charting a very unforgiving course."

"Do you want me to resign?"

"No."

"I can't do my job," she repeated. "If I can't make guarantees and expect them to be upheld, how can I can demand guarantees, Kodja? How?"

"Maybe it isn't about making guarantees anymore, Halinchi. It hasn't kept them from pushing us, has it? I don't want you to resign, at least... not necessarily. Halinchi, I am not entirely like comrade Altalanuk. I fundamentally believe that it's possible for us to coexist with humans. But maybe not this time. Could they be made happy, Halinchi?"

"You mean: or can they only be made unhappy? I don't know, Kodja, though I feel as though I endured several years now of trying to find out."

"It won't be your fault if it comes to blows. You've done what you can. We owe you a tremendous debt, Halinchi, for everything you've done. Please don't think I blame you for the consequences we've wound up facing."

"I don't." The badger had started to calm down. "You're better than your predecessor was. I told him that we shouldn't have paid for Kerkoda, after the skirmishes... I tried to explain what danegeld was, but at the time he thought that we would continue to grow stronger... and that we could afford to look weak if we were strong. Maybe it was a miscalculation."

"Maybe we need to be stronger?"

Her expression shifted. As it had ebbed from fury to calm, now it drained from calm to weariness. The sharp white lines of her mask only accented the diplomat's slump. "As it stands our foreign policy is impossible, Kodja. If we could best them, we could contest their demands. But if we move to gain that strength, we throw off the thin veneer of legitimacy congress gave us when they allowed the Commonwealth of the Enlightened to purchase this land forty-seven years ago."

"Do we exist by their legitimacy? Or by our own?"

The sound of her laughter, soft and bitter in the quiet office, added a despondent poignancy to her bleak expression. "I respect you, Kodja; I respect all of my colleagues--Altalanuk, too. You're not dumb enough to ask that question."

"And yet I did."

"Declaring independence is the simplest thing in the universe, Kodja, from any master. 'I am free'--that's it. In the end you don't even need the last word. 'I am.' It's staying independent that's the problem. You can stand anywhere you like, but unless nobody can push you off, the land isn't yours."

"But if that's true, and they can, then this land isn't ours."

"Sometimes, Kodja, I have my doubts."

Levin had been waiting outside; before the door closed, he let himself into Kodja's office, and took a seat on the other side of the desk. He was the first to speak, demure as ever. "Nobody wished for this. You might consider agreeing to Halinchi's proposal. Altalanuk may be an old friend of yours..."

"She's not... not entirely." Kodja flattened his ears and lowered his head. "And I told Halinchi I would consider it already. Yassuja, though, Levin, I'm getting this from all sides. Like I'm being chewed on by a dozen pups."

"Sayyich was never much for chewing, thank goodness. But I suppose I know what you're trying to say." The Border Collie reached across the table to pat his wrists reassuringly. "You'll manage, as you always have."

"You don't know all of it. In confidence, sarunga, yes? You are an old friend, but you're not actually in the cabinet, just our advisor. They trust you. I trust you--and I trust you with this. Alta told me that the business council is rearming, based on her surveillance. She asked for budget to do the same--it was in the request that I outlined to you, although I called it 'training costs,' I think. You said it was too expensive."

"And you denied it, in the end."

"I did; the expense was a good excuse. I don't feel that it was the wrong decision, either. But... Gerrich told me something unsettling. She confirmed that when she visited the ETaN complex, they had armed guards. They explained it on account of the Sanganese reoccupation, and reminded her this planet has seen skirmishing in the past."

The Border Collie listened quietly, and nodded. "That is, of course, true."

"Yes, it is. CODA has a defensive agreement with the Yucatec colonies here, Levin, ourselves included. We pay our dues; they're supposed to come to our aid if the Kingdom attacks again. Perhaps they won't, or perhaps it won't be enough... but the council can't believe they could defeat a trained army. It's not even worth wasting money on it--you know how the humans can be with their budgets."

"You think their target is us?"

"Yes. Alta said that they wouldn't leave us in peace, and if they intend to, they aren't doing a very good job of it. ETaN has no border with us--they have no border with anything that isn't controlled by the council. They don't need guards, unless the council has begun demanding that their members assemble a militia. I don't have Altalanuk's history, or her tactical experience, but I can't ignore the sense that she might be..."

"Right?"

"Not paranoid enough."

"Should I find money in the budget for the Defense Committee?"

There were many human phrases appropriate to the situation. A stitch in time saves nine, that was one saying. More relevantly, if darker: if you want peace, prepare for war. What came to mind, though, was simpler; it did not even rise to the level of proverbial.

The phrase Kodja heard in what Alta and Grey Palmer told him was storm warnings.

"More than the budget, I may need a favor."

"Anything."

"I'm going to tell inanu Halinchi not to apologize to the council unless they take responsibility for sending an armed patrol into our territory. I'll ask her to file a complaint to the ecclesia, not that I expect anything to come of it. We won't cut Alta loose."

"The budget?"

"Needs to be considered. Actually considered. Halinchi needs to start talking to others beyond the council. Allies."

"That won't be the answer she was looking for," the Border Collie said, mildly.

"Yes, she'll be unhappy. Others will be unhappy, too. Some in the cabinet will say I'm only provoking the beast, when we've gone so long without trouble. Some will say that I'm not going far enough. I know that the discussions will be... contentious. We look to you as a voice of reason, Levin."

"You want my support. It's yours, Kodja; you know that."

Kodja looked the dog in the eye. "Would you give it if I didn't ask? If it wasn't me?"

His answer was too oblique for comfort. "It's a dangerous path we seem to be facing, comrade. I wouldn't take it by choice. But I know that you wouldn't either, right? We might as well take it together."

***

Corsini, 25 kilometers north of Davis Chartered Colonial Jericho

"Oh, I know, you're too practical for that," Arkas said, chuckling. "But would you indulge me anyway, dear?"

Levin stuck his tongue out at the gentle needling from his husband. "You didn't need to ask, now, did you? I'm here."

Arkas laughed again. "Good. Ran al-ishiriy solja hakh al-ishiru dunja kurdag; ran al-ishiriy kolja hakh al-ishiru sunja kurdag; ran jaghan al-koshath kurag--jan sha-hakh al-nokath rukhag." It was, according to Arkas, the inscription that would run beneath his latest sculpture. 'When the last peals of thunder have had their final echoes, and the last songbirds have sung their final song, it is only then that I will speak to you of my devotion for the final time.'

"Thinking of someone in particular?"

"My boyfriend," Arkas teased. But when Levin caught his paw, and inertia swung him around into a hug, he licked the Border Collie's face gladly. "Does it work, do you think? It's not too long?"

"It's not too long, no." Levin didn't have much of an ear for poetry, especially not the sort that relied on odd manipulations of rukhat grammar. The task fell to Arkas.

The stout, overly fuzzy samoyed struck nobody as an artist at first blush. His model line came from a need for cold-weather surveying work--and if that seemed at odds with his omnipresent, quirky grin at least the fur made sense. Clay had a bad habit of sticking to it despite the precautions he took.

For the moment his paws were clean; his latest project, commissioned by the town hall in Kir Kodaw, was made of wood and metal. Arkas worked in secret; the long walks he took were a source of inspiration. They also helped to wear down Sayda, their son, whose boundless energy had carried him half a kilometer further along the trail.

"What about silly? Sayyich said if he told that to Kishla she'd bite him."

"Kishla?"

"Kishun Hadar, one of his classmates. See what happens when you don't come to the school meetings, Levin, dear? Do you want to know when he gets engaged, or..."

Levin shuddered to think of it. Sayda was growing up so fast, the notion was no longer in the realm of distant absurdity. "It was at the same time as an important briefing! I told you I couldn't get out of it."

"You did. There's always one of those, it seems. But you came this time. I appreciate it," Arkas added, giving him a squeeze. "You needed the break, too."

"I know, I know." Administrator Kodja had called a meeting of the Jericho cabinet, and for once Levin was happy to skip it. There wasn't much he could do to help: he wasn't on the cabinet, and he hated seeing the way stress aged his old friend. "I don't spend enough time with Sayyich anyway. Don't argue, you've told me as much before."

"I've told you as much," the samoyed agreed, but crushed Levin into a hug, and licked his muzzle again. "But you can't help it, and you do what you can, I know that. You've done the same for me, when I was locked in the workshop."

Levin might acknowledge the truth, but still, Sayda had done much of his growing up while the Border Collie was off at one interminable meeting or another. Arkas was closer to the pup; his authority was more commanding.

He was yelling at him now. "Sayyich! Get down from there."

The pup had scrambled up one of the broken vehicles that dotted the Corsini Plain, relics of its military past. He must've heard Arkas, but swung his legs over and sat down, surveying them from his perch. The weathered hulk had clearly seen better days--the metal bent, twisting in jagged edges around un-natural holes. Who knew what had felled it?

More to the point, who knew what dangers it concealed? It had once been a war machine, full of things designed to kill and shred and destroy. "Sayda," Levin barked. "Listen to Arkas. You don't want to be leashed, do you?"

"No, halla," the pup said, though he stayed in place. His paw poked at a spiky bit of metal. "Do you think it still moves?"

"It hasn't moved in almost fifty years, little one," Arkas said. "Not since the Sanganese lived here and left it behind."

Levin shook his head, grumbling. "I've been trying to get engineers out to remove these old things. Even if they weren't dangerous, they're an eyesore--probably stuffed with chemicals leaching into the soil, too, not like anyone has the budget for testing..."

"My father said they removed all that, but the frames weren't worth salvaging." Arkas was a Jericho native, and the family farm was in the same Corsini Plain that had been the site of a fierce battle half a century before. "He paid for testing because he was worried about the crops. Sayda, get down."

Their son slid with a pup's careless grace down the side of the hulk. "I heard you, Arkas, I was catching my breath." He dusted himself off and turned to look at the machine. "Not Sangan."

"Hm?"

Sayda started walking--skipping, even, when Arkas took his paw to restrain some of his exuberance. He went on, lecturing in a child's precise, calm tones. "It isn't from the Kingdom, halla. It is a Denel model 55 Red Jackal, with two Colt 394 ninety-millimeter linear cannons, used by CODA until 2520."

"And where did you find that out?" Levin asked.

"I dunno. I read it in the library with Kishun. Kishun's dad says it was the best mech of its time. Kishun is going to learn to drive them when she grows up. I bet it's loud."

Neither Levin nor Arkas had served in any of the Yucatan Alliance's military forces. Levin didn't entirely understand what motivated freeborn nakath to do so, considering the antipathy the Colonial Defense Authority had for upholding its contracts to the scattered nakath colonies that paid dues to them. "I bet it is, too," he said. "Are you going to drive them, too? You like Kishun, apparently."

"Not that much," Sayda retorted. "I already told you, I'm going to fix harvesters the way inana Gosari does. That way I can see Arkas's pack when we go to repair their machines. If you were around more, you'd--"

"Sayyich," Arkas said, cutting the pup off curtly. "Don't say that."

"Well, it's true! Truth comes from speaking freely, halla," Sayda added, and slipped free of Arkas's paws, racing on ahead to the stone bridge that crossed one of the park's streams. Sayda liked splashing in the water almost as much as he liked harvesters.

Levin sighed and stopped, watching him. "It is true, much as I don't like hearing it. I might..."

"You wouldn't be happy." Arkas slid his arms around the Border Collie, hugging him tenderly. The notion of leaving his official post to take a part-time consulting job came up often. The first time, it was the samoyed's idea. He'd learned better, though Levin had not. "You care too much about this place."

"My family should still come first."

"And if you think about it," Arkas reminded him, "you'll wind up telling me that you help Kodja because of your family. You want Sayyich to be able to grow up here. Or... or not, to move to Dawa or something, but this will always be his home."

"Always," Levin said. He turned, looking behind them to where the derelict mech lay in repose. "Always. Yes." Until the last echoes of the last thunder had died away... he shook his head, and nuzzled Arkas fondly. "Fine. Now, about this Kishla character..."

***

Administrator's residence, City of Davis Chartered Colonial Jericho

"Will you ever be done stressing, Ishla? I haven't seen your tail wagging since last autumn."

"What do you teach your students about exaggerating?" he asked. He forced himself to smile, though it never took that much effort for the marten to draw one of those from him. The diminutive Ishla--from his full name, Alishat Hass-Kodja--was hers and hers alone. "It was wagging this morning when we left the house."

"And has it wagged since?"

"Maybe not." He gave his wife's nose a gentle lick. "If you're so concerned, Nuri... maybe we could trade. Would you like that? I could be a teacher, and you could talk sense into the cabinet."

"Do they understand the meaning of 'time out'?" she teased. "Somehow I doubt that it's anything that simple, or you would've tried by now. I wouldn't be much help."

He laughed and hugged the marten close. "You're impossible, Nuri."

"But you love me. And you put up with the cabinet, too--maybe you have a soft spot for impossible things." Then, for a moment, her countenance turned serious. "I do know it's tense. Levin wouldn't even speak to me to cancel dinner yesterday--Arkas had to, and he seemed to think Levin was a bit ashamed at needing to relax."

"They have Sayda to take care of, though."

"Sayyich is so well-behaved I've a mind to ask what drugs those two are feeding him," Nuri said, and shook her head. "I know it's something at work, something you can't talk about. I won't pry. But if there's anything I can do..."

The balcony of their apartment faced the sunrise; it was their habit, instead, to watch the evening deepen. Ordinarily there would be stars, but the night was cloudy, and the air had the heaviness of imminent rain, and in the featureless sky it was possible for Kodja to see whatever he wished. "You can, love, of course."

"Of course?" She leaned against his side, turning to nudge the retriever's neck. "What's that?"

"How's your work? How are the pups?"

"Good. Learning fast... asking the right questions... they're growing tomato plants and one of them asked me about photosynthesis. I didn't know what she meant, at first; she called it 'making the air sweet.' I had to ask Tadra, and he said it's what they call it in the dialect they speak in the black arcos."

Kodja nodded; every minute with the marten's warmth against him made the cabinet seem further and further away. "If you look at the etymology, our word for it references a sun. I suppose if you don't have one of those, it doesn't make as much sense. Was she from a deep-space arcology?"

"I believe so. And you, love, you need to be careful." Nuri straightened and nosed the side of his muzzle. "They're not 'pups.' Almost forty percent of them aren't nakath."

"Sorry, I'll try to make assumptions. Does the language bother them? Is it time to start teaching Perlan?"

Relaxing again, closing her eyes, Nuri gave a soft laugh. "I hope not; my parents tried to forget it. They never taught me." Perlan was the tongue KMT programmed into their moreaus; unlike nakath-rukhat it hadn't emerged organically and Nuri's parents were far from the first to abandon it at the earliest opportunity. "The children don't mind. Sometimes they ask what kind of dog I am... I just say that I'm the teaching kind."

The colony was founded by dogs; for a few years after that dogs were the only ones to live there. Kodja wasn't surprised that non-canine moreaus and nakath got on well--how could it have surprised him? He'd married Nuri, after all. But it was still reassuring to know that he wasn't the only one.

It was clear that there would be no stars that night, and the hour was late. The tension Nuri perceived came from a cabinet meeting that ran late--well past the dinner hour, and they'd all ignored the food that was eventually delivered. Kodja retired to bed, and Nuri followed.

With his eyes closed, he told himself the meeting had been a good one. Productive, despite the acrimony. Halinchi agreed to argue their case before the sector's governing authority. Altalanuk accepted the approval of half her budget request, with the other half going to the energy department to invest in strengthening the security of their power grid.

Chadakh Sutta, the education minister, didn't protest the freeze in his budget--he might later, in private, but the wolfish shepherd was in Altalanuk's camp and believed that the colony earned its sacrifices. He'd said only råk nan ratag, the moreau independence slogan. We will be able to do it. It was a conspicuous choice of words.

But so far, we have _been able to do it. And every day we manage that is a victory on its own. And every day that we--_a gentle touch at his side broke into his thoughts. "Nuri?" Somehow she'd known that, despite his stillness, he wasn't yet asleep.

"How's your tail now?" she murmured. "Better?" The marten's paw wandered, in the darkness, warm and inquisitive as its owner.

Kodja gasped. "That's not my tail..."

"No?" Nuri teased him slowly, grasping his sheath and giving it a gentle, stroking squeeze. "Maybe it isn't... I thought it was soft like one, at least, but I seem to have been mistaken."

Tiredness, and the stress of the long evening, no longer mattered so much. Kodja took a deep breath and turned to face the marten. His actual tail, freed up, thumped erratically between the mattress and the sheets. "I would not call it a mistake."

"I wouldn't--either." Nuri's breath hissed when he nuzzled her, nipping the inviting, enticing edge of her curving triangular ears. They were nothing but shadows, but he knew them by heart: the softness of the fur; the exact shade of mahogany and the way that, with the morning sun behind her, they glowed in halo.

He nudged her with his paw, and she rolled onto her stomach, turning to look at him sideways over her shoulder. The look was open; desiring. Something else he knew by heart, just like he knew the way her silky fur yielded beneath him when he pinned her down.

She quivered under him, her breathing shaky in anticipation--like it was their first time, not their thousandth. And in the same way, when the searching tip of Kodja's shaft found its mark, his short growl had the tension of undimmed eagerness. He slid inside her, the growl went low and dark, and the sighed moan that reached his ears thrilled him the way it always had.

The retriever bent down to nuzzle her. To whisper his love for the marten, even as his hips pulled back and swiveled forward to take her a second time--smoothly, pumping in a steady, even rhythm. His paws stretched out until they found hers, and their fingers intertwined against the mattress.

"Kodja..." Her voice was thin, pleading, a tremulous whimper. He bucked in reply, his length sliding fully into her, rigid and heavy and solid in the soft, wet embrace of her pussy. He thrust again and again, each time a little more forcefully, until she cried out his name again and gratification lent it a ragged edge.

The dog kept to that tempo, hips rocking smoothly as he filled the marten, his cock parting the warm velvet of her folds to push deep--the withdrawal an afterthought; an inconvenience. He kept to it from a familiarity born of the exquisite, intimate knowledge they had of one another.

He kept to it knowing how long it would take until their patience and resolve ebbed into something more primal. How his pace would change, and sharpen. How, soon enough, he would be driving into her hard and deep. How Nuri's ears would twitch and quiver, before the rest of her started to, when she lost control. How she would cry out, and--

And even so, even though he knew it was coming before her back arched under him, it pushed him over the edge. His muzzle dropped, and he nipped at her shoulder, and the back of her neck. The retriever's knot was thickening, swelling fast, and as he worked it into her the nipping became firm, possessive biting.

Nuri squeaked, her soft-furred body twisting and jerking beneath him when his last thrust claimed her and his teeth clamped down, and his snarl soaked into her pelt. Their wild mating found its reward in her ecstatic trembling and the rolling, throbbing pleasure of his release.

He kept his teeth tight on her scruff, snarl settling into a satisfied growl, until the urgency of pumping the marten full of warm canine seed had mostly passed. When he let go, and fell atop her back, she gasped, holding that breath before it spilled from her in a moaning sigh.

"Is the stress gone, love?" she murmured.

But it always was, around her. He nosed the marten's fur back down where his teeth had wetted it, and lapped at her ears one at a time until she began to twitch again. This, too, he knew from experience. And this, too, he enjoyed as much as he ever had.

And eventually, after his knot softened and he could pull free of her, after they'd cleaned up and it was time to become tired again, the warmth of her body in his arms, disturbed only by gentle, steady breathing, lulled him to sleep.

They never had time for stress.

She roused him the next morning by prodding his shoulder firmly--actually, by the strength of it, she'd probably been trying for some time. "Someone's at the door, love."

Kodja sat up, grumbling. If it's Altalanuk... if she's gone and demolished something else_..._ He didn't finish the threat. He didn't know how to finish it, other than by resigning, the way all his predecessors had. All the same, he hoped that it wouldn't be the Ibizan, and kept telling himself that as he pulled on his clothes and went to answer the door.

It wasn't Alta. It was Halinchi, looking so absolutely exhausted that he wanted to apologize for feeling irritated at the interruption to his sleep. "Hello--good morning, Halinchi."

"Indeed. I'm not bothering you, am I?"

"No. Not... not really. It's later than I thought, I guess."

"We've all been having late nights."

True enough. "Is something the matter? You don't normally visit me at home."

"I figured this time it was worth it." The badger looked over his shoulder, and gave a brief nod. "Good morning, Nuri."

"Good morning! You'll stay for breakfast?"

"I..."

"I'll make it this time, Kodja; you and Halinchi can talk in private. And then you'll stay--right?"

Halinchi at last nodded, and Kodja let her into the apartment. Nuri went to the kitchen, closing a door that separated it from the living room. "She's always in a good mood," the badger marveled. "That must've been why KMT let her go. It's not why they let me go..."

"She sleeps better than you do, Halinchi." He gestured to the living room sofa, and took a seat next to the badger. "Meaning, I suppose, that she sleeps at all--did you? Or were you in conference all night?"

"Yes--that. They convened a special session of the ecclesia to discuss matters on our little planet. Given that there were two competing grievances, one filed by UMM and one by us, it seemed only fair. They're quite interested in fairness."

"Are they?"

The diplomat sighed, and rubbed her claws down one of the stripes on her muzzle. "No. They're interested in not getting involved. They've stopped short of officially censuring us for attacking the mining trucks, but they also didn't censure the corporation for trespassing in the first place."

"Status quo?"

"Not quite. They've proposed a compromise. The Jericho Business Council will agree to respect our territorial integrity, and we will abandon our proposal to develop an independent communications infrastructure."

Kodja blinked and then, realizing what she meant, narrowed his eyes. "Those aren't even related. We can't agree to that."

"We didn't. We also didn't consent to compensating UMM. Union-Mayweather claims that they were only following a directive issued by Rattan Steel, who's part of the JBC. I said that if that's the case, it should be covered by Rattan's insurance. Eventually I got out of them that the insurance company won't pay out because it was an illegal operation--that made it difficult for the ecclesia to demand we pay them."

"I imagine if the insurance company knew how they were being used, they might've had a different tune?"

"Who knows? They like money more than common sense at times, Kodja."

"Fortunately for us, in that case. Was an agreement eventually proposed?"

"Yes. The agreement is that they won't cross our border without our approval, and they have to request it at least one day in advance. Requests to transit our territory have to be approved, unless there's good reason, but if they intend to stay longer than a few hours--surveying, for instance--we can say 'no.' They also can't be armed."

None of it sounded intrinsically unreasonable to him. "Alright..."

"We'll be required to pay for whatever manpower and equipment is needed for the border checkpoints, and whatever is required to turn around requests in under a day. If it takes longer than that, the Council reserves the right to renegotiate the agreement. They wanted us to disarm; I said no. They wanted a six hour turnaround; I said no. They wanted us to pay for their own staff to man the checkpoints along with us. I said no."

"All of this sounds acceptable, Halinchi."

"I agree. It does. And the Jericho Business Council has accepted those terms."

But she'd come to him directly, first thing in the morning. The retriever tilted his head. "So when are you going to tell me the bad news?"

"I think they accepted because they're reading between the same lines I am, Kodja--the ecclesia didn't push the issue because they don't intend to intervene here. It should be a long-term solution, but the council didn't get anything they really wanted, and I don't see them putting up with that forever."

"So it doesn't feel like a long-term solution."

But, she said, they'd have to wait and see what happened. For the moment they'd stood up for themselves, and the humans had blinked first. Kodja thanked Halinchi for her hard work; by the time Nuri announced that breakfast was ready the retriever had also gotten Halinchi to promise she'd get some sleep.

"You seem to be in a better mood," the marten observed; she could've been speaking to either of them.

Halinchi answered. "I came to update Kodja on some... trying negotiations. They've been successful--at least, I hope Kodja agrees with my assessment."

"I do. Very much."

"I guess you mean negotiations with humans? If that's successful, it's a welcome change. Can you and Kodja relax a little?"

The glance that Kodja and Halinchi exchanged wasn't particularly optimistic, and after a moment Kodja decided he was being too cynical. "I'd like to think so. I'd like to think we've finally found a way to get along."

"Me too. We've been here for four decades. It's long past time."

***

Aboard the MV Aphrodite Celestin In transit to the 'Chartered Colony,' Jericho

Kashina flinched at the bitter taste in her mouth, but waited until the man had zipped up his pants and left to grimace properly and rinse her muzzle with recycled water from the cabin sink. At least it hadn't taken very long.

The proposition hadn't taken long either, of course. Captain Karsten, the ship's master, agreed to take her with the rest of his cargo. But, he added--almost like an afterthought--he expected something 'worthwhile,' in return.

When she asked him what that meant, and he told her oh, I'm sure a good girl like you knows a few tricks, the man's odd leer told her everything else she needed to know. It might as well have let Kashina predict the future, because the rest of it happened by rote.

The sound of his knuckles on the door to her cabin. The way he said alright, let's see why I bothered taking you. Being told what a good bitch she was. Being ordered to wag her tail. Even the pat on the head was expected.

In one sense, Kashina didn't really mind. Of all the distasteful things she'd done, suppressing her reflex to bite down didn't come anywhere close to the top. He knew who she was--or he guessed from her urgent need for transport off Mars--and she trusted him not to put her out an airlock. The rest of it was just a familiar value exchange.

In another sense, she had to wonder if it was telling. The more she read about Jericho, the more she understood that her move there amounted to temporary exile away from humankind. The moreaus at Davis and the outlying towns traded with human corporations, but maintained the independence they'd won in battle all the way back in 2484.

She could respect that.

Not that you're going to stay. You've never had a home. Don't let anyone tell you this will be different. If Djanesh thought that it would break the spell of the seven places she'd tried before, the Rottweiler was sadly mistaken. Perhaps just naive. True believers are like that.

Kashina kept her distance from 'belief.' In her time with the Starlight Faction she'd come to sympathize with their plight, but Congress wasn't likely to give in and her motivation was nothing so high-minded as ideals. Starlighters gave her the ability to exact revenge, and she was comfortable figuring she'd let that drive things until it killed her. The score was already more than even.

Captain Karsten visited her three more times before the Aphrodite Celestin started its final descent into the planet's atmosphere. By then she was more ready to be done with the ship, and to catch her bearings in a new place. Even if she didn't plan on staying, it would be better than the freighter, and better than Mars.

Karsten didn't ask for her name--various slurs sufficed. Her new identity card only had a corporate number, with the alias left blank. She chose the nakath-rukhat word for "eighth"--it would be easy to remember, at least, and easy to switch to ninth on her next residence, and tenth the one after that.

Nobody would ask. Nobody cared about such things. She took an automated shuttle from McKeever Spaceport to the colony's border crossing, watching home-for-now drift lazily past the bus windows. Lots of trees and greenery.

I bet they love it here. All the communing with nature and singing about how nice the dawn smells...

The first Jericho moreau she met was a retriever who had to have been freeborn. No company-bred dog smiled the way he did. His uniform had a little tag that identified him as the border control officer.

"You have border controls?" she asked, handing over her identity card.

"Oh, you mean my clothes? The clothes were secondhand." The retriever laughed, and her certainty that he'd never known a corporate barracks deepened. "I'm really the director in charge of onboarding. So... welcome! You were the only one on that ship. We don't get so many from Mars, not these days."

"These days?"

"They started cracking down hard about ten years ago--before I was working. Most of the moreaus who were going to come did then. The rest of it's... well, if you're from there, I don't have to tell you. The corporate moreaus are under extremely tight programming, what's left of them."

"There are a few free ones, but they did seem kind of... subdued. I never thought about coming here. I was sent by a Rottweiler named Djanesh."

The dog's ears perked up at that. "Oh! Yes, right--you're the one! Come, come on. I was told to bring you to the deputy administrator as soon as you landed. Inanu Jahalnaja wants to meet you."

He started walking, his tail wagging in fresh excitement, and Kashina was compelled to trot along after him. "Wants to meet me specifically? Why?"

"So many questions! That's a good sign! I'll try to have answers... Djanesh sent word ahead. Jahalnaja has a job for you, I think. I'm sorry, it's a bit unusual--normally immigrants plan for their move and, well... my work is pretty easy."

"The onboarding work."

He nodded swiftly. "Yes. Temporary housing, finding employment, going over the rules and introducing the colony in general and... things like that. You have an apartment already, but I was told not to try to slot you into an open work team. It was all quite strange. Normally... well, you see, when moreaus come here, they send a talent profile, their interests... I didn't even get a name from you, just Djanesh telling us to be on the lookout for a dog from Eridania."

"Sorry for causing trouble."

"Oh, no." His waving paw brushed the thought aside. "It's fine. Just means you need to introduce yourself. I only glanced before I got distracted--Ald..."

"Altalanuk."

"Ah, right, right. 'The eighth'--you were the eighth in your family, I guess?"

She felt abruptly self-conscious for having chosen it. "I don't... I don't know. Who knows where we get these names, anyway? Maybe I was the eighth to open my eyes, or I was born in the eighth month, or..."

"Fair enough. I'm Alishat Hass-Kodja. I was born here, in a farm out by Salem--my mother says I loved the trees so much I'd stay there until it was completely dark." He chuffed a friendly, happy laugh at the memory of his childhood. "I was meant to be a forester."

"But you wound up welcoming newcomers instead?"

"As much as I love the trees, I love the colony more. We're the largest moreau enclave that isn't independent--did you know that? Dawa is kind of segregated--we're here right in the midst of all this activity! It's really an achievement."

Kashina--no, it's Altalanuk now, get used to that one--didn't know what to make of his enthusiasm. Nor did she know what to make of a colony that had both recruiters and dedicated workers for integrating new immigrants. "The activity around us is... human, though, correct? Mostly Yucatec?"

"Yeah, it's all Yucatan Alliance. The Confederate Congress guarantees our charter. Let's see... over there, to the north, you can see the cranes?" He pointed to the horizon. "It's actually a human company; they're helping us to build a solar power plant. Right now most of our power is hydroelectric, but when the solar plant opens we're thinking about investing in a chip fabrication plant."

"Manufacturing?"

Again his nod was on the unsettlingly boisterous side of eagerness. "Exactly! This isn't like Dawa; we're not all farmers. We have data scientists here, workshops, construction companies--all the moreaus who've brought their talents from their previous lives, or learned new ones along the way..."

"Successfully?"

"Well, we're self-sufficient in more than just food, unlike Dawa or Hana Lanja. Once the Ikashta solar plant opens, we'll be self-sufficient in power generation, too. Not to disparage the farms, of course; we do have those. But we're much more than that."

A true believer, the Ibizan thought. "So when are you going to tell me the bad news?"

"What do you mean? Is there bad news?"

"There often is."

He only chuckled to her, in the same warm, easy laugh as before. "Don't let me mislead you, please, Altalanuk... because I will; it's my job to. Things aren't perfect here. There have been some growing pains--I don't see how you'd get twenty-five thousand moreaus in one place without growing pains. We've gone through seven administrators in the last three years, the security chief stepped down two months ago... and our neighbors don't always get along with us..."

"The human ones? I'm not surprised. I've had my share of not getting along with them."

"Many of us have. It's in the past now, though, right? We're building something special here, Altalanuk. You sound like a skeptic, now--but I think you'll come to like being a part of it."

"Will I, then?"

He seemed certain of it. His paw patted the Ibizan's shoulder. "You'll see."