[AP] PRODIGAL SON, A Rogue's Tale - Book II

[Nathancros]

And cookies are delicious,but take forever to fill you up.

Thats the point! so we can eat them Fooooreeeeverrrr

[Triaxx2]

Split proud to introduce: Boron Cookies, in many new interesting flavors: Seaweed, algae, and ever popular BoFu! Made with love, and death.

[Golden_Gonads]

Eve'ning, new reader here and I'm enjoying the story so far... At least as far as Chapter 67. Chapter 68 (on page 60: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... &start=900 ) refuses to load for me - I've tried three or four browsers on two different computers and... Nada. It seems to me that the length of the page has broken the forum.

I'll try and leave a proper review if and when I manage to continue with the story, but all I'll say for now is that this story (and it's predecessor) got me back into the X-Universe after a few years away (Not an intentional absence, but something that just... Happened), and it's impacting on how I'm playing and approach the different races.


EDIT: Just realised I never actually got to the point of this post: If anyone has any ideas on how to fix that page, or can PM/email/Carrier Pidgeon/Otherwise provide Chapter 68, I'd be much obliged.

[Olterin]

Surely Scion has it all saved up and ready to go somewhere that isn't this forum... right? Outside of that, said page looks like it should be something the forum admin be pointed at, because something seems very broken there

[Scion Drakhar]

Turns out it's both page 60 & 61. No idea what's going on with those two pages. I informed Alan Phipps. Dunno what will come of it. In the meantime here's Chapter 68.

Chapter 69 continues on page 62, so you should be good to go from then on.

Cheers

[Golden_Gonads]

Aha! Cheers. Hopefully it'll get sorted in this thread soon enough. I was going to PM the moderator for this sub-forum, but as their last post anywhere was 18 months ago...

[BlackArchon]

I just finished reading the end of chapter 75. Thank you Scion that you did not let Seldon and Chinomu... do things together. You have no idea how much I hoped you won't tap into that cliché, because you had me fooled a few times into thinking so. Thank you!

Scion, I don't know how to express how much fun you brought to me during the last two years with your Drakhar story. Since I never did write stories, I don't really know how much work you have invested into this. It must be tremendous. On the danger of sounding selfish, I hope that you will bring us many more chapters of your Drakhar story.

You wrote that you have some health issues. When I had some of my own, I experienced that having a task in which I can put all of my energy in it helped putting the problems aside, at least temporary. If this is also the case for you, then of course I hope that you will get better in the future. Even if that means that I can't continue reading your fantastic stories.

I wish you the best for the future, because I don't know how to express my sympathy for you more.

[Scion Drakhar]

82. Bad Penny

You know, I've gotten used to my days bein' somewhat... surreal. I mean I'm fifteen jazuras old, an orphan, and I've spent about a third of my life on the streets with nobody but me to watch my back. Just a few months ago I literally had to fight a dog for my dinner. If I roll up my sleeve I can still see the scars from where that mutt bit me. I don't think I'll ever have the language to describe just how low, how dark, and how dirty that place was, and I don't just mean the streets. I'd gotten to a place inside my head and soul where I'd simply stopped believin' that it could ever get any better. And it's-ah, well, it's kinda scary what happens to… well, to your resolve... to your will to just go on... when you're in a place like that, when despair is a weight bearin' down on you, pushin' you into the dirt and the grime. It's like… you get to this place where you just want to lie down and die, to give up just so you don't have hurt anymore.

That's where I was when I found that poor son of a bitch dyin' in the street. He was just a jazura or two older than me, pale even in the half light down in old city, and sittin' up against a crumblin' brick wall in a spreadin' pool of his own blood. I knew who it was, this guy named Danny Gaverty. He was one of Toni Azara's 'knockaround' guys just like I'd been before Sin betrayed me and set me and the other guys I'd been workin' with up to get pinched or killed... kinda like Gaverty. The poor bastard had been shot in the belly and left for dead by whoever he'd been tryin' to sell to, who either didn't have the money to pay or just didn't respect Toni enough to bother.

But... with that poor bastard's death... I was free. One crappy, bare-bones disco and a credit account later and I was in the stars. Now it's just a little over four months later and I am arguably one of the more powerful players in the galaxy, with all the trappin's of wealth and power to prove it. Right this very moment I'm standin' at the window in a private cabin aboard a fast, powerful, and proven warship, drinkin' whiskey that goes for nearly five hundred credits a bottle and smokin' a hundred credit cigar. I have a fleet of warships at my command, own three very profitable complexes that employ tens of thousands of people, and a business worth somewhere between two and three hundred million credits a day… and that's with me doin' nothin' but sittin' on my ass and callin' Thane once a day. I'm pretty sure that if I sold everythin' right now I'd be worth over two billion credits. So one could argue that surreal has become a way of life for me.

Even so, I was NOT prepared for what the universe had in store for me tonight.

********

"Alright, Féret," Gil said, twisting the man's name like a knife, "I understand. You believe unflattering things about me and those beliefs prevent you from accepting the notion that I really do just want to help my son." He held up a hand as if to forestall an argument. "Now I understand why you believe these things. I even understand why Drake believes these things..."

"Because they're true?" his guest suggested.

"True?!" Gil laughed. "Truth is relative, my friend. Surely even you..."

"No," the other man contradicted him. "Truth is truth."

"What people believe, what they think, is always determined by perspective, their point of view. Yet there are an infinite number of perspectives from which you can view any object," Gil smiled, enjoying this well practiced lecture. "Which means you can never see the entirety of even just one object from any single perspective. There are always parts of the..."

The other man interrupted with an amused snort. "It doesn't matter how many perspectives you look at a pile of shit from, Gil. It's still shit."

"Fine," Gil sighed. Then he nodded. Finally he met his guest's eye with a chilly smile. "Well then I suppose I will just have to demonstrate my good intentions."

"Uh-huh." Gil's guest managed to convey a truly impressive amount of skepticism with those two syllables.

********

Lieutenant Melissa Hang was nearly at the end of a stazura (4.3 hour) long combat air patrol in Spires of Elusion. It had been a quiet watch but despite the tranquil setting the quiet was dangerous. Long periods of quiet tended to dull the senses by lulling pilots into introspection. To make matters worse, protecting a swarm of freighters while they dug through the rubble of a giant boulder was neither a glamorous nor particularly exciting way to spend one's evening.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting when she signed on to fly for Drakhar Enterprises. There had been so many rumors floating around when the recruiter showed up at the Elena's Fortune military outpost; rumors about the Phantom pirates who'd made off with entire ships just a couple months ago, and the youthful, one eyed pirate who led them, rumors about how this Drakhar, a billionaire of only fifteen jazuras, was, in reality, that same pirate (who'd managed to find a new eye somewhere) and was recruiting an army to fight the USC and the Split. There'd been so much gossip flying about that it was easy to fantasize about what a pilot who signed up with the outfit might find themselves doing. Melissa, herself, had imagined everything from taking part in daring raids against Terran fleets to setting entire sectors ablaze like the hand of a wrathful god. So far the reality had proven to be somewhat less epic. It was, in fact disappointingly familiar. For one thing the military arm of D.E. really did run like a military, including efficient chains of command, endless training, uniforms with easily identifiable rank insignia, endless training, the all-too-familiar sense of not knowing where she would be stationed tomorrow, endless training, daily musters, regular inspections, waves of terrifying rumor and titillating gossip that officers would either confirm or deny with identical exasperation, and, of course, endless training.

There were, of course, differences between D.E. and the Argon military, and they were dramatic. For one thing the pay was significantly better. In the military it would have taken her nearly three mazura (187 days) to make the same money that she'd just made in the past two wozura (18 days). For another, the food was not merely edible, it was good. Very good. Despite being named after some kind of purgatory, the Tartarus was equipped with an entire army of stewards, chefs, and kitchen staff who were tasked with keeping the miners and their guardians happy. So the food was good, the water was hot, the bunks and linens were soft, and there was plenty of distractions to help everyone unwind in the off hours.

Of course, the corporation also expected to get what it paid for. So both discipline and training were intense. The pilots were trained, taught, and conditioned constantly, then regularly pushed to their limits, though rarely beyond, to see where the shortcomings were in their skill sets. Throughout their training they were monitored by both medical and psychological staff to make sure they were safe, and pilots were occasionally removed from the roster until they were cleared by one or the other. When Hang had first been told of the attention they'd be getting from the docs and pshrinks she'd rolled her eyes, thinking it absurd and unnecessary. A few weeks later her own experience changed her mind.

The simulators in particular were very taxing. They were powerful, virtual reality training modules that were so convincing that even from a fully cognizant state it was easy to forget that you were safe and sound aboard your base-ship and not actually in the cockpit of a tenjin or susanowa, and the pilots weren't always fully cognizant. Every couple of weeks Hang had simply "woken up" in the cockpit just as some kind of intense, life or death struggle unfolded. In one of them she'd actually failed so badly that she got to experience the horror of knowing she was already dead and not being able to do a thing about it. A trio of pirates in notus haulers had fried her shields and melted the susanowa's armor with plasma burst generators. Just before the simulation ended Hang had actually felt the loss of air pressure and gravity as the ship came apart around her, and she swore that she felt the heat of the PBG's roaring forward into the cockpit despite being assured that was impossible. For nearly a week she awoke in the dark, still seeing the bright orange and purple flames shooting forward over her shoulders to engulf the yoke in her hands. She'd wake gasping for a breath that she knew in her bones wouldn't come because the fire had already destroyed the life support and used up O2 that was meant for her. She awoke knowing that she was dead. It had been so intense that it affected her ability to fly. So she'd been cut from the rosters until the pshrinks were able to address the terror around the memory. Since then the parameters for the VR safeties had been improved, so that the simulation would shut down and return the pilot to the real world the instant there was no mathematical chance for victory, thus sparing the pilot the emotional trauma of dying. Even so, those simulators were so intense that all of the pilots preferred real flying to the VR.

Chinomu called it tempering, and compared the training to the forging of blades. Hang didn't know about any of that but after just a few days of guarding the mining fleet it was obvious that, as intense as it was, the training saved lives. Despite the tranquil setting up here, there were a lot of pirates passing through Spires of Elusion and about one in every four or five squadrons were either too crazy or too stupid to realize that the mining outfit was not undefended, and despite being crazy and stupid the filth was still very dangerous. And then, of course, there was the stupidity of her own team to worry about.

She still couldn't believe that Rhyner had just decided not to call in a mobile pirate BASE, letting it fly right up to the asteroid field to drop anchor, and then boot a few laser towers out into the dark, towers that promptly started shredding the miners. Fortunately backup from the fleet had been nearly immediate and, with the assistance of a pair of corporate frigates, the pirate fighters were quickly mopped up, and then everyone got to watch as that pirate base took a few nuclear-tipped kicks to the face. Since then the pirate fighters had been both less frequent and less aggressive. And now, even when they did attack, they retreated instead of allowing themselves to be destroyed. For her own part Melissa suspected they were probing the fleet's defenses, and had said so during several after-mission debriefings, often to the accompaniment of nodding heads from her fellow pilots. As a result additional satellites had been deployed throughout the sector to deny enemies any avenues of approach, there were always two CAPs flying on opposite sides of the fleet, and there were always enough pilots standing by to man every plane in case shit hit the fan again. So she didn't know if the pirates were planning something or if they'd just learned that poking this particular hornet's nest hurt. Even so, in just five days they'd lost four susanowa heavy fighters, and one of the mining mistrals. They'd also lost three fighter pilots and the three man crew of that mistral. All of which could have been much worse, and it was obvious that the reason it wasn't was the training. People knew their jobs and did them… well, except for Rhyner.

'Dumbass,' she thought at the man. She'd heard other pilots argue that Commander Chinomu's response had been heavy handed. Saema Kwon, a delicate young woman from a colony on Montalaar, had even called Chinomu's response 'monstrous'. Hang could only shake her head. People had died because Rhyner wanted to add to his score card. As far as she was concerned the son of a bitch got off easy. She would have thrown him in the brig for a mazura or ten and then kicked him out of the fleet. But it wasn’t her call.

"CAP lead coming about," she announced. "New heading: two eight seven by zero degrees." A moment later her two wing-mates acknowledged the order. "On my mark," she said. "Three. Two…"

A sudden, blinding flash of light off her port side cut her off before she finished. Hang immediately dropped her eyes to the sector map while all the layers of polarization shielded her eyes. It took about a sezura for the gravidar and satellites to identify the new contact. It was an ancient Teladi Shrike identifying itself as the 'Good Fortune'.

"Oh shit..." she breathed, loud and close inside her helmet.

********

The Shirubāurufu docked with the Necromancer at 21:42. After disembarking, Eri made her way to the ORR to change out of her flight suit. She was thinking of her coffee pot in the little shoe box over the pilot's lounge that she used as an office when aboard the Necromancer and going over the last few hours in her head. The exercise had gone well and the debriefing was constructive. The nugget's weaknesses were talked about and action plans were made to improve them. Siobhan Kult came up with several ideas for using drones more effectively. Even Weamond had some useful input, which Eri wasn't sure she liked. She still didn't like Weamond and secretly kept hoping he'd fail or drop out, but the man was proving Seldon right. With proper training and the right opportunities the ginger bastard actually did have the makings of a good stick. And with two panthers to crew as well as the shuri the kid was making noises about, she expected that she'd need every pilot she could get her hands on. Which meant she'd have to make use of him no matter how much it irked her.

She threw her bomber jacket over her shoulders, closed her locker, and had just finished dropping her sweaty flight suit in the specialized laundry bin when the ship went to alert condition one. Red and amber flashers lit up, klaxons began wailing, and a female voice thundered over the 1MC. "THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!" Eri blinked, stared at the flashers for less than one heartbeat, and then took off at a dead run toward the Necromancer's control tower. Less than twenty seconds later she was on the ladder up to PRI-FLY when the woman thundered at the ship again. "PREPARE TO JUMP IN TEN! NINE! EIGHT!..."

Eri reached the top of the ladder and stepped onto the command deck of the control tower. Flight Controller Flot Kayean glanced up at her. "Greetings Commander!" Boss Kayean said while staring at two different sector maps in front of her. "Welcome to the mad-house."

"What the hell is going on?"

"Contact in Spires of Elusion!" Boss Kayean replied and there was something in her voice that chilled Eri's blood. The other woman met her eyes. "It's that shrike from everybody's first day on the job."

For exactly three heartbeats Eri recalled the horror of that day; the sudden silences over the radio, the bone-breaking hits as her tenjin rode nuclear shockwaves, and the grisly scenes aboard the Necromancer left by the enemy boarding party. Then the thundering countdown over the PA…

"…THREE! TWO! ONE! JUMP!"

...ended, and the ship seemed to stretch around her. The images on all of the monitors filled with the scintillating blue light of Cerenkov radiation. All four women squinted against the glare. Then the monitors went dark and, as they blinked through the sudden disorientation, all four women saw the new constellations on every monitor, as well as subtly different views of a beautiful blue world in the ship's starboard quarter. They were now tens of thousands of light years across the galaxy in Spires of Elusion.

Eri quickly searched the monitors and sector map to understand the situation. The Predator was a few kilometers off the Necromancer's port bow and already accelerating. A little over fifteen kilometers away the forty mistral miners were abandoning the shattered remains of the giant nividium asteroid like old women at a yard sale who'd just seen a man-eating tiger jump the back fence.

"Oh hell," Petty Office Raker moaned, sounding despondent.

Eri followed the woman's gaze and there, on the forward monitor, she saw the shadow of the same scarred old monster that killed Cate Keswen and still visited her during some of her worst nightmares. It rested, relatively motionless, about ten kilometers past the last of the freighters, positioned so that both the asteroid's rubble and the mining fleet itself were between it and Drake's warships.

"Launch all attack fighters," H'nt's voice erupted from the overhead speakers.

Boss Kayean and her subordinates immediately relayed the orders to the pilots and deck crew.

"And put the interceptors on stand-by," Eri added, sounding distant even to her own ears. Just as the words left her mouth the comm chirped in her ear. She touched the receiver and answered, "this is Chinomu." A moment later her employer was speaking in her ear, he had instructions concerning the ship with a skull and crossbones on its side.

********

"Two frigates, Cap'n!" Anders bellowed from the gravidar. "At two seventy eight by negative twelve degrees. Range twenty nine point seven kilometers!"

"On screen," Gil commanded, sounding bored. A moment later the forward cameras targeted a pair of ships that just jumped into the sector. Gil nodded to himself at the sight of them; the Predator and the Necromancer. He sighed a little at the thought of those names, then rolled his eyes. At least they weren't named 'Merlin', 'Lancelot', or 'King Arthur'. He'd thought the kid would never outgrow that particular phase.

"They're launching fighters, Cap'n!" Anders announced.

Gil nodded. He'd expected no less. He'd wasted no time after jumping into the sector and had positioned himself carefully to put the mining fleet and the asteroid debris in between himself and the kid, who he expected to be upset with him. So the Fortune was at rest nearly thirty kilometers away, and the frigates would have to maneuver around both the miners and litter before they could start launching missiles at him. Which meant he'd have plenty of time to do what he'd come here to do.

"The Predator is... accellerating, Cap'n," Anders informed him, sounding impressed. On screen the Predator had banked hard to starboard and then leapt forward at well over three hundred meters per second. Gil nodded. He'd seen enough footage of the kid's griffin to know that it was packing a Split-made turbo booster. But even at full power it would take the kid nearly thirty sezura just to reach a position where he could safely start throwing missiles past his own ships and the nividium he was mining. Then, even after the missiles were on their way, Gil would still have at least another fifty sezura before whatever the kid threw at him got close enough to be a threat.

"I have fourteen heavy fighters coming right at us, Cap'n," Anders announced. "With the mining fleet's fighters that makes thirty two..."

"I can count, Anders," Gil cut his master at arms off.

"Of course, Cap'n," Anders growled.

"The Predator is opening her missile tubes, Captain," Jimmy Donovan announced from the other side of the bridge. "Scan shows tornadoes!"

Gil nodded and opened his mouth.

"Kestrel makin' a run for open ground, Cap'n!" Anders interrupted him.

Gil frowned. That was unexpected. 'What the hell is that about?' he wondered. The answer came almost instantly. The kestrel could deploy a jump beacon ahead of the other two frigates; a jump beacon that would allow a missile boat to jump directly into firing position. 'Clever,' he thought. Out loud he said, "open a channel."

Several sezura later his comm officer, a female Split named Njy t'Sai, looked up from her station. "No answer, Captain." She informed him in the typical high Split monotone.

"There won't be," Gil stated. "Drake's mad at me and always got quiet and sullen when he was pissed. But trust me when I tell you that he IS listening. So just open the channel and let me talk to him."

"Aye-aye, Captain," she replied, stiff and formal. "The channel. Is. Open."

********

Seldon exhaled slowly, and deliberately, trying to dispel the tension from her guts. It was a futile effort. Just two mizura earlier she'd been trying to get in touch with Chinomu, with no other thought in mind than breathing fire on the two idiots who'd nearly killed Doc Jared, and making sure that they were held accountable for their stupidity. Meanwhile Drake had been arranging for both Legion and the Doctor to be transferred to the Endless. That was when the Tartarus signaled for help. After just one look at the telemetry Drake forgot about everything else and promptly chivied half the fleet into action. He'd tasked the Necromancer and the Sword of Aggrievance, ordered the mining fleet to withdraw behind the protection of the fighters and ordered the Sisyphus (which was half full of nividium) to jump to Senator's Badlands.

Less than twenty sezura later the Predator was in Spires of Elusion and roaring to life around her. Red lights and flashers accompanied the klaxons as Commander Nedley's voice announced battle stations throughout the ship. Drake was barking orders both to his bridge crew as well as to the CIC on the Necromancer as the Predator's engines spiked up to three hundred percent capacity, which shook the entire ship. They were currently hurtling past the asteroid field and toward open space at over three hundred and sixty meters per second (805 mph). Meanwhile Seldon stared through the forward view screen at the shape of Gil Jerigan's shrike, the Good Fortune. It was holding position about fifteen kilometers beyond the end of the asteroid field, about thirty five kilometers from the jump beacon, and just the sight of the thing was enough to make her blood run cold. Staring at it she believed she could feel the places where her bones had been broken.

A few paces to her left the kid was glaring through the forward view screen with murder in his eyes. The mining ships had stopped working, and were pulling back toward the pitiful protection of the Tartarus while the mining fleet's fighters encircled them. The Necromancer, which had jumped in behind the Predator, was already launching her own fighters. Once they were in the black the Necromancer would then position herself between the shrike and the mining fleet.

Seldon took another deep breath in another futile attempt to relax. She understood why Drake had made her an official part of his bridge crew. She even approved of it. Being here gave her the opportunity to stop him from making the kind of mistakes that got people killed. At the same time she felt even more removed from the action. She could give orders, set objectives, establish procedures, rules and codes of conduct, but when it came right down to the wire she had to rely on other people to walk the razor's edge, assess their situations, and make the decisions necessary to keep her people alive. It was a form of torture that was not getting any easier to bear. And right now twenty of her marines were standing by at the transporter while Drake glared at the forward view screen with the hard, frozen expression that always seemed to be on his face when he was thinking about Gil Jerigan.

On one of the monitors the kid's pirate kestrel was screaming through the dark ahead of them. Seldon had overheard the orders Drake had given to Chinomu regarding that kestrel. It was a good plan, and he'd come up with it so fast that it almost seemed as if he'd planned it out ahead of time. The kestrel was racing toward a position beyond the asteroids where it would drop a jump beacon that would then enable Ch't F'rst or F'ght F'rm R'ng to jump in with both a missile frigate and a clear shot on that shrike. Yet Seldon couldn't stop thinking about the last time this fleet had tangled with that particular old warship, or the man who commanded it.

"We're being hailed, Captain," Communications Officer Nedley announced.

"Let me hear it," Drake said, sounding cold.

"Put it on the overheads," Seldon instructed Comm Officer Nedley, which earned her a glance from Nedley, who then looked to Drake for approval.

"Sure," Drake nodded, "but don't transmit," he added. "Give them nothing. We listen only."

"Aye aye, Captain."

A moment later the holographic projectors lit up. A two meter square of shimmering light coalesced into a picture of the Good Fortune's bridge, with Gil Jerigan at it's center. As the image formed the pirate was looking at someone off camera while wearing an amused expression. At the sight of him, and not-quite smile on his face, Seldon felt both hot and cold at the same time.

Then Gil turned to the camera and smiled in earnest, and Seldon had to take a breath as the light of that smile broke upon the Predator's bridge like a sunrise. It was so fair, and so innocently benign that, for an instant, she couldn't quite reconcile the memories of the siege and the injuries she'd sustained with the face of the man in the hologram. Even with the one strange eye, Gil Jerigan was a very attractive man. He was immaculately groomed. His clothing was clean, stylish, and obviously expensive… and that smile! Yet, at the same time, it was all just a little too polished, a little too innocent, and just a tad too exuberant to be authentic. It occurred to her then that he actually reminded her of Odin, and the instant that thought crossed her mind the spell was broken. She blinked, cleared her head, and then looked again. This time, instead of seeing a smiling heart-throb, she merely saw a particularly good con artist. He was still gorgeous but now she saw the tarnish, and that smile seemed less the light of a new day than it did the smoke and mirrors of an illusionist. Which meant that after that first moment of breathless admiration she felt a slow, subtle nausea spreading upward from her guts into her throat, and it was coupled with the powerful inclination to punch Gil Jerigan in the mouth.

"Hey kiddo," Gil said through his game show host's smile. "So-ah," he glanced up and to his right, presumably at monitors displaying the gravidar feed, "judging by the way your deploying your forces," he glanced back at the screen with a raised eyebrow, "I'm guessing you're still upset about the last time we chatted."

Seldon clenched her hands into fists and squeezed so tightly that even her militarily short fingernails dug into her palms. The last time Gil and Drake 'chatted' cost the Necromancer over forty people, including thirteen of her marines.

"Which means," Gil went with a spread of his hands, "that my money is on at least one of those two missile boats of yours making an appearance here before too long." He then leaned toward the camera and turned his head a little, as if confiding a secret. "I really like that new one, by the way." He showed that dazzling smile of his again. "Nothing like one-of-a-kind items, is there? But hey!" he chuckled and spread his hands. "I understand! I really do. If I was you I'd want to kick my ass, too. Thing is, this ship is kind of old and the last time we saw each other you actually gave her quite the spanking." He gestured at the vessel around and behind him. "Hell! We still don't know what half these new bumps and rattles are."

He glanced at something off camera and nodded, then turned to the camera again. For a moment he didn't say anything. He just stared at the camera, and without the smile there was something in his face that pulled at her, as if there were a genuine humanity there that she couldn't quite see. After a moment, though, he smiled again and she felt the oily slickness of nausea return to the back of her throat. "Alright," he said. "Well, you'll have to forgive me for not sticking around to enjoy everything you have planned for me. Before I go, though, I wanted to give you another present," he smiled even more broadly, "uhm... do try not to lose this one." He then turned to someone off screen and nodded. When he turned back to the screen there was an amused twinkle in his eye. "Of course," he said, "I say 'give' but it's more like returning something. You know," he shrugged, "like a wallet or..." he grinned again, "…a bad-penny."

"Drake," she said instantly, "if he gives us Ricky Machado again I am gonna shoot the son of a bitch."

"Noted," Drake replied.

"Either way," Gil went on, spreading his hands magnanimously, "I hope this demonstrates the sincerity of my intentions."

Drake snorted derisively.

"Captain?" it was another Nedley. This one was working the gravidar and sensor systems. "They just ejected something from an airlock. It looks like a space suit but I'm not detecting a computer, or communications systems. Just an active transponder."

Drake grunted. "He wants to make sure we find it," he stated. "Dead or alive?" He asked.

"Alive, sir," Gravidarman Nedley responded. "Human in an EVA suit. But at this range that's all I can say for certain."

"Alright, Drake," Gil said from the projector. "Looks like I've got about ten sezura before that kestrel's in position to drop that beacon. So I think I'm gonna take my leave before you start throwing warheads at me." He smiled that game-show host's smile again. "But call me sometime, will ya? We really should talk. Oh!" he grinned, "and tell Hayla I said 'hi'."

"That'll be the day," Drake growled under his breath.

With that the channel went dark. A few heartbeats later the sudden, blinding flash of light marked the Good Fortune jumping away.

For a moment Drake just stood where he was, staring at the empty space where the holoprojector had just been showing them Gil Jerigan. Then he shook his head, touched his ear to open a channel to Chinomu. "Recall the kestrel," he said. "Leave enough birds to maintain a perimeter but recall the rest." There was a brief pause as Chinomu confirmed the orders. "Also," he went on, "I need you to prep a rescue team for whoever Gil just booted out into space."

There was another pause.

"Aye," he said. Then, "no," and it was obvious from his tone that Chinomu had her own ideas about what to do with Gil Jerigan's 'gift'. "No, I want to see who that is. But be careful. Coordinate with Seldon," he said and glanced over his shoulder to meet Seldon's eye. "I want marines on a tenjin and I want that tenjin to go get whoever Gil just kicked into space," he said to the pair of them. Seldon nodded and then stepped away to start coordinating with her own subordinates on the Necromancer. But just as she did she heard Drake continue. "But don't take any chances. I want that suit scanned for explosives, bacteria, viruses, and whatever else we can think of. Get Doc Compton in the loop and listen to what he says." He turned back to the view screen, now showing little more than forty mistrals picking through the rubble. Then he glanced at Seldon again. "And pick steady marines. No itchy trigger fingers."

She nodded. "Understood."

"Alright, Gil," he said to himself, "what the hell are you playin' at?"

********

Eri touched the communicator in her ear. She knew who it was without checking the display on her wrist. "Seldon," she said.

"Hey," Seldon replied. "You see the astronaut that shrike just booted?"

"Aye," Eri replied, squelching an echo of the terror she'd felt upon first seeing that old monster again. "We've got it on screen." Then, to Petty Officer Raker, "zoom in on that suit."

"Yes, ma'am," the blonde technician replied and immediately began manipulating the camera controls.

"I've got Randall and three marines mustering on your hangar deck," Seldon told her. "Just tell 'em where to go."

"Roger," Eri replied. Then, after a quick glance at the hangar deck, "you can let him know to muster at tenjin four." Then, to Petty Officer Slamer, "activate the running lights for lane three slot five."

"Aye-aye, ma'am," PO Slamer replied. "Leading the Jarheads to tenjin four."

"Hey," Seldon said in her ear.

"Yeah?"

"Put my mind at ease and treat this as if it were a trap, okay? I still wake up in cold sweats since the siege in Savage Spur."

"Hey," Eri replied indignantly, "I tried to talk the man into vaporizing that suit. Troy would still be standing if they'd had the sense to burn a certain wooden horse."

"I have no idea what you're talking about..." Seldon replied

Eri scoffed, thoroughly disgusted. "Right," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "I forgot. The entire Argon 'race' tried to forget that Earth existed. You know there's an old axiom about those who forget history being doomed to repeat it!"

"Peace, woman! It wasn't my call, alright?!"

Eri grumbled under her breath and then pointed at one of the pilots on Boss Kayean's roster. "Watch her," she said. "That one's been trying to prove she's got bigger stones than her wingmates."

Boss Kayean nodded.

"Hey," Seldon called to her again, "we're also tying Doc Compton into the circuit as well." Eri blinked, then arched an eyebrow at the news. "Drake said if he gives an order your pilot needs to obey it."

Eri sighed, understanding but not liking the implications. "Understood," she replied. "I'll make sure she's aware."

"Oh, and one last thing," Seldon said. "Did you get my messages?"

"I haven't checked my messages since sixteen hundred," Eri told her. "I've been busy with training ops for the last three hours… err..." she winced, "sixty mizura... ish... "

"S'okay, Earth girl," Seldon laughed at her, "I can do the conversions. But listen; two of your pilots decided to scare the hell out of one of Drake's guests, an old guy named Doctor Sol Jared..." Eri winced, knowing what was about to come next, "...and it nearly killed the old man." Eri scoffed and rolled her eyes. "I don't know who it was but I'd consider..."

"I do," Eri groaned.

"You what..?"

"I know who it was."

"You do?!"

"Aye," Eri groaned, writing some notes in shorthand for Flot Kayean to relay to Lieutenant Drummond, tenjin four's pilot, concerning the doctor and Seldon's marines. "I saw it happen," she confessed. "I already gave them an ass chewing over it. What happened to Doctor Jared?"

"He nearly died! The stress aggravated a breathing condition. He started coughing so hard I thought he was gonna burst his pipes. No joke, girl." Seldon's tone was hard. "I thought we were gonna lose him. He's in cryo now and Drake was gettin' ready to send him over to the Endless when Gil Jerigan and that frakkin' shrike showed up. Listen," Eri practically heard the shrug, "I don't want to step on your toes or anything, but I kinda like that old man. So I would consider it a personal favor if both those morons were miserable for the foreseeable future."

Eri nodded, albeit with a small sigh. 'Dumbasses,' she thought. She didn't understand why stupidity was so prevalent in younger pilots but, like she'd told Hunter, even she hadn't been immune to the affliction. "Alright, Chief," she said, "consider them in hell."

"Thanks."

"Is that it?"

"Yeah," Seldon replied. "I'll let you go."

The line went dead and Eri returned to the tasks before her. While Boss Kayean managed eleven of the fourteen fighters returning to the ship Eri stared at the astronaut on the monitor. Whoever-it-was was barely visible and tumbling head over heels in slow motion while drifting through the void. They were also wearing an ancient, white EVA suit with big orange stripes running down the arms and legs. She stared at the suit for another ten seconds or so, alternating between thoughts that the thing belonged in a museum and revisiting her conviction that they should just blast the damn thing into scrap. She understood Seldon's reservations perfectly. Since Gil Jerigan first orchestrated the boarding attempt on the Necromancer the mere sight of that damned shrike was enough to inspire an almost superstitious conviction that something terrible was about to happen, and one glance around the CIC was enough to tell her she wasn't alone in her unease.

********

"Tenjin four is in position, Captain," Gravidarman Nedley informed the bridge.

"Talk to me," Drake replied.

"Close range scans confirm that the suit is nothing but an insulated pressure suit with an O2 tank," Nedley told him. "It has no computer, no thrusters, and no communications equipment. The occupant is a human male, aged forty to fifty jazura, about 63-64 kilos (140lbs)..." He paused and glanced at his Captain. "The scan says Terran nanites," he said significantly, which narrowed more than one set of eyes. Drake merely arched an eyebrow and waited. Nedley turned back to his screen. "The subject also seems to be suffering from a number of injuries, mostly contusions and..." Nedley shook his head and then looked at his Captain again. "I don't know what most of the medical data means, sir."

"It means that whoever that is has been tortured," Doctor Compton's gravelly voice interjected over the comm. "He was beaten bad enough to break a few ribs. He's also recovering from what looks like one hell of a concussion. He's underweight and malnourished, which means he was probably starved and likely dehydrated. I'll know more when we get him back here but whoever that is has had a rough go of it recently."

"Anything I should be worried about?" Drake asked. "Or can we pick him up?"

"Scans don't indicate any explosives or radiologicals, Captain," Gravidarman Nedley replied.

"Doc?"

"Well, personally, I prefer blood tests to fortune telling," Doc Compton replied. "So why don't we bring the guy back here and I'll poke him with a few needles and make him pee in a cup before declaring whether or not he's a biological weapon." Seldon blinked and wondered what she'd have to do to be able to get away with Doc Compton's brand of sarcasm.

"Alright," the kid nodded gravely. "But I want it done in a quarantine."

"Right," Compton replied.

"Alright people," Drake said. "Let's go collect Gil's latest 'gift'."

"And pray we're alive this time tomorrow," Seldon muttered under her breath.

*******

Lieutenant Drummond slowly matched the astronaut's velocity as she brought the tenjin alongside the castaway. Then she positioned the ship so that when the starboard airlock was opened, the marines would be looking directly at their target when they opened the hatch. One deck below her Randall finished confirming that the other three marines with him were all hermetically sealed inside their suits. A few sezura later, the jump lights changed from red to green. He quickly glanced over his team, confirming that they were alert and ready. Then he hit the big red button that was normally hidden behind a locked cover. A moment later the alarm flashers began cycling, throwing overlapping arcs of amber light throughout the cargo hold. Over the course of the next five sezura all the air pressure vanished, taking any lingering sense of exterior noise with it. The gravity was turned off, resulting in some of the ship's cargo shifting within its netting and forcing the marines to rely on the magnetic boots built into their suits. Finally, the outer hatch began to open. Despite the fact the bay had already been depressurized there was always just a little atmo left, and a brief gust of air carried a tiny swirl of metal dust into the void. Less than a sezura later the target was in sight.

Randall nodded to himself. The castaway was about twelve or thirteen meters directly alongside the tenjin, tumbling in a slow exchange of head for heels and back again. At the edge of his vision Randall could see the nearby frigates, both of which were stationary in relation to the sector center. To him it looked like they were sliding slightly sideways, and he guessed that in relation to the frigates both the package and the tenjin he was on were moving through the dark at about fifteen to twenty meters per second.

As he was watching the suit Randall caught a glimpse of the face inside the helmet. It seemed to turn in his direction. The suit's motion combined with both the dark and the glare from the tenjin's spots prevented him from any kind of lengthy examination, but he thought he saw a male human face framing a pair of piercing eyes, and for just an instant the expression on that face gave Randall a moment's pause. An instant later the face was lost in the dark and the glare, so he put it out of his mind. He clipped a safety line to his armor just as Sergeant Kellar stepped up to the hatch.

"Alright, ladies," Jak said into the confines of his helmet. "Smooth and easy, now. Let's go meet our new guest."

********

The helmet cams of all four marines were relayed from tenjin four to both the Necromancer and the Predator, where the feeds were displayed on the overhead projectors. Seldon herself could do nothing but watch and wait. She watched the feed from her marines. She watched the tenjin and the barely visible smudges of light that were the shapes of Randall, Kellar, Pareii, and Lau t'Nnt as they spacewalked out to meet Gil Jerigan's latest surprise. And she waited, half expecting the suit to explode just as her guys got close to it. She watched the bridge crew as they worked and also watched the feed from her marines and the various cameras mounted on both the Predator and tenjin four. But mostly she watched Drake.

Drake, like everyone else on the bridge, was staring at the feed from the cameras. Through the differing angles provided by the four marine helmet cams, and the rear cam of the tenjin, and a long range camera mounted on the front of the Predator, they were able to watch as Randall and Pareii first reached and then communicated with the subject. While they worked Seldon tried to make out the stranger's face. As the astronaut tumbled the suit itself hid almost all identifying features. It wasn't a modern suit. Instead it was a thick, heavily padded pressure-suit with big, round arms and legs, and a big spherical helmet with a thick plate of once-transparent material that the occupant was meant to see through. Between the suit's robust dimensions, the darkness, and the glare from all the lights reflecting off the scratched and battered face shield it was difficult to make out anything of the suit's occupant. Even so, she was able to catch glimpses of a face, and this particular face seemed familiar.

Beside her Drake suddenly stood up and took a step forward, suddenly fixated on the feed from Randall's head cam. "Tell the Gunnery Sergeant," he said, pointing at the monitor he was staring at, "to get me a good look at the guy's face."

Seldon opened a direct line to Randall's helmet. "Gunny," she said.

"Chief," he replied.

Through the cameras she watched Randall and Pareii take hold of the stranger and begin using their maneuvering thrusters to counteract the momentum of his free fall. "The boss wants to see his face," she told him.

"Copy that," Randall replied, and was heard by bridge crews of both the Predator and Necromancer as well as by Lieutenant Drummond, the pilot of tenjin four. "One mug shot coming right up."

In a matter of sezura Randall and Pareii had the stranger under control, then hooked him to a pulley cable from the tenjin's airlock. While they were working Seldon managed to catch several more glimpses of the subject's face. They were brief, and obscured by both the dark and the glare on the scuffed faceplate. Yet they were still enough to make her feel like she'd been punched in the gut. 'It can't be!' She thought, then looked at Drake. His 'admiral's face' was gone. Hope and horror walked hand in hand in his eyes. He was seeing the same thing she was.

Seldon turned to look back at the screens just as Randall finally took the castaway's helmet in both hands. The lights from Randall's own helmet reflected and glared off the battered Mylar of his face shield, but with a tilt of his head Randall managed to reduce it somewhat. Through the helmet cams of Pareii and Kellar she watched Randall wave in front of the guy's face, then point directly at the camera on the side of his head. An instant later the stranger looked right at them.

Seldon unconsciously covered her mouth with one hand. The castaway squinted into the light, causing crow's feet to wrinkle the corners of his eyes. His mouth was pressed into a thin, hard line. Then the light glaring off his face softened and through Pareii's helmet-cam she saw that Randall had just dimmed the torches on the side of his helmet. A moment later Jak depolarized his face plate, and then activated the internal illumination in his helmet. He was letting the castaway see his face. Through Randall's feed she saw the crow's feet soften a little around the castaway's eyes, and the thin line of his mouth relaxed. A moment later Randall gave the man a 'thumbs-up' and the fellow even managed a small chuckle.

"How's that?" Randall asked in her ear, sounding relaxed and friendly. "Good enough?"

Seldon turned to look at the kid. Drake was fixated on the screen. His face was so naked just then that she almost felt ashamed to look at it. There was a light in his eyes that she hadn't seen in months. It was as if hope had just returned to his soul, like a light in the dark, dispelling grief, sadness, and despair as if they were shadows. It only lasted a moment before he noticed her attention. Then he blinked and looked away. As he did his guard slammed back into place. An instant later his face could have been chiseled out of stone. Then he met her eyes and nodded.

"Yeah," she said to Randall. "That's great, Jak. Bring him in."

"Copy that," Jak replied, "bringing in the stray."

Seldon nodded then looked back at the kid. Drake was staring at the carpet. After a moment he looked up and met her eye. "We should be there," she told him.

He thought about it a second then nodded. "Aye," he said, "but first we need to get out of this sector." He touched his ear again. "Chinomu," he said. "Recall the fighters. H'nt, prep the Necromancer to return to Savage Spur. Oh, and Nedley?"

Three voices replied to him. "Yes, Captain?"

"Uhmm… XO Nedley," Drake clarified.

"Sir," Commander Nedley replied.

"Tell Yahanis to recall the Sisyphus and get the miners back to work."

"Aye-aye, Captain."

********

Eri watched the crash as if it happened in slow motion. Ensign Janne Rider decided to remain hands-on for her landing, something Eri didn't exactly discourage, provided the pilot knew what they were doing, which Rider both did and did not. Like many pilots the woman had a big ego, and was currently competing with another pilot, despite being in the competition alone. Warren 'Ripcord' Selek was a competent, experienced pilot who didn't care whether Rider outdid him or not. Rider, though, was still trying to make her bones and taking every opportunity to prove that she had what it took to be an ace. In this case that meant flat-hatting her approach. She came in way too fast. First PO Raker told her to slow it down but Rider just ignored her. A moment later Boss Kayean got on the horn and threatened to ground the woman if she didn't cut the damn throttle and back off to a reasonable speed.

Eri cursed under her breath. She knew what Rider was doing. It was a combat landing; a high speed approach followed by a powerful breaking maneuver at the last second that both slowed the plane and forced it into the trap. The problem with the maneuver was that it was possible for one of the maneuvering jets to hiccup due to changing pressures, sediment in the line, or just wear and tear on a valve or nozzle. During normal operations such a hiccup would be barely noticeable and the deck crew would correct the problem the next time they ran stress tests on the bird. But during a combat landing the plane was forced to decelerate from over a hundred meters per second to zero in one point eight seconds while the plane hurtled into a metal box. Which meant the slightest interruption in braking power was disastrous. Eri knew Rider was in trouble the instant the woman hit her reverse thrusters. The hiccup resulted in uneven braking, which was enough to change both the susanowa's yaw and pitch while also reducing braking efficiency. This meant that Rider hit the trap front strut first while simultaneously traveling slightly sideways at just over ten meters per second. An instant later the effect was all too apparent. The Necromancer's mag lock 'grabbed' the plane, and since only the front strut was in contact with the deck it was forced to bear all the stress of Rider's diagonal landing and crumpled like a beer can. The front strut collapsed, pitching the susanowa nose first into the deck.

"God DAMN it!" Eri cursed.

"Oh, bloody hell!" Boss Kayean griped and immediately opened comms with the plane following rider into the trap. "Seven this is tower! Wave off! Wave off! Wave off!"

"Roger that, tower," Scot Marval replied calmly. "Hot-Dog waving off."

"Slamer!" Kayean barked. "Get an emergency team up there and lock down that lift."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Eri was on her feet by then and had opened a channel to Rider's susanowa. "Rider?!" she barked. "Rider, this is the CAG! Talk to me, Ensign!"

"I'm here, ma'am," the pilot groaned from inside the damaged plane.

"Are you injured?"

"Some bumps and bruises, ma'am," the pilot informed her sounding as if she were hissing through clenched teeth. "I'll live." The woman almost sounded cheerful.

"Good," Eri told her. 'Because I'm going to make you wish you were dead.' "Stay put and wait for medical."

********

It occurred to Seldon that she was trembling. It wasn't an outward symptom. Her breathing was slow and even. Her heart rate was not elevated. And her hands were steady enough to ace a marksmanship eval. No, this was something different. It was as if her blood and marrow had become electrified. She felt like a tree whipping about in a strong wind, or a ship tossing on the waves of a massive storm. She felt like she should be staring at a wall of dust and poison from an erupting volcano or into the salt encrusted wind as her ship rocked and pitched on fifty foot swells. Instead there was nothing but the deep hum of the Necromancer, the slight clatter of Kao t'Kt's armor, and the soft whisk of her uniform as they walked along an empty corridor beside Drake.

It had taken five mizura [13 min] for tenjin four to return to the Necromancer. During that time one of the susanowas had crashed its landing, rendering the Necromancer temporarily unable to jump as emergency repair and rescue teams moved in to deal with the crashed plane and damaged lift. So Drake, Seldon and Kao t'Kt beamed over to the Necromancer, where they were now making their way from deck two to the hangar bay. After leaving the transporter pad they made their way two bulkheads aft to the lift, which they took one level down, then began making their way even farther aft to the main corridor beside the hangar deck on the port side. As they neared the end of the corridor from the left Seldon actually sighed with relief. Ahead of them, muffled by the bulkheads and a closed hatch, was the roar and thunder of the hangar bay. Which meant an end to the silence that was so at odds with the trembling in her bones.

Then the hatch opened and the sound swept over them so violently that it felt like a physical assault. At first it was nothing but a single cacophonous roar that drowned out everything else, including her own thoughts. After a moment, though, she began to make out individual sounds. She could hear the roar of idling fighter engines, and the thousand different sounds that accompanied the varying forms of machinery and power tools required for moving and caring for the planes. Then she heard the shouts and bellows of working crewmen, including a shout from her left.

"COMING THROUGH!"

An instant later a man with a hover-lift sped past them with a pallet covered in toolboxes and machine parts. He was followed by two more crewmen, one in an orange jumper, another in a green one, both running fast enough to nearly be sprinting.

The next of her senses to be overwhelmed was the olfactory. The smells of ozone, burned rubber, the ever present stench of tar from the non-skid surface of the deck itself, petroleum, silicon, various chemical degreasers, the varied and mostly repugnant bodily odors produced by the three species that composed the Necromancer's crew, and, of course, the rich and slightly horrific aroma of Dal's cigars all reached her nose from different directions. Combined with the overwhelming noise of the hangar deck and the effect was dizzying.

"Holy crap!" she cursed. "I've never heard it this loud before!"

Drake glanced at her, momentarily amused. "She launched all her planes!" He had to shout to be heard. "Most of them are still runnin'!" Then he looked down the hallway. In that instant Seldon noticed all the lime green headsets the crew were wearing. "We're gonna need hearin' protection to go in there!"

The instant the words were out of Drake's mouth Kao t'Kt stepped forward and snatched the headsets off a pair of very shocked crew members. One of them turned so suddenly to look at the author of the robbery that he tripped over his own feet and fell to the deck. The other rounded on Kao t'Kt with outrage on his face, a raised hand, and a mouth open to express some choice words. As the fellow came face to face with Kao t'Kt's chest, however, and then had to lift his gaze nearly twenty degrees to meet Kao t'Kt's blazing blue eyes, the hand fell, the words died in his throat, and the outrage on his face faded into a sheepish and slightly terrified smile.

"Oh yeah!" The crewman grinned as he backed away. "That's okay! Yeah, we don't need those! Who needs to hear, right?!" He then turned, quickly helped his fellow back to his feet, and then both of them fled at an even faster pace than before, sending shocked glances back over their shoulders at the enormous Split and the young billionaire standing behind him. Kao t'Kt then turned and handed one pair of headsets to Drake, who looked amused, and the other to Seldon, who sighed and shook her head.

"They're gonna be tellin' that story for the rest of their lives," she said while setting the ear protection on her head and adjusting the fit. Both men looked at her. Drake was already wearing his own lime-green ear-muffs and Frank was wearing his helmet, which would have auto-compensated for the volume. Drake obviously hadn't heard what she said, and Frank wouldn't care. So she just shook her head at Drake's questioning look.

A moment later they were moving again. Kao t'Kt created a hole in the traffic for them… mostly by glaring at people... and she and Drake followed closely behind him. As they walked she glanced through the wall of hyperglass to her right. Through it she could see the hangar bay in its full, unbridled glory. Planes were being towed by lift trucks, and secured in magnetic tie-downs where they were, or would be, inspected, refueled, and resupplied. Crewmen in orange, yellow, or green jumpsuits were running, seemingly in all directions at once. There was a great deal of shouting, but all of it seemed to be for the sole purpose of getting someone's attention. The rest of the time the crew seemed to communicate with a curious form of sign language. Simultaneously, scaffolding lift trucks were being erected beside the foremost of the three enormous lifts that lowered planes into the hangar after they'd landed in the trap above. She couldn't see the damage herself, but supposed she wouldn't from below. She could see the steamers working to bring two more planes down into the compartment, as well as the almost frantic pace of the workmen who were now responsible for repairing the ship.

Nearly a hundred meters farther aft, near the Necromancer's lone bomber, tenjin four was secured away from the other planes. It was surrounded by white-coated medical personnel in full hazmat suits, as well as by a handful of black-armored marines. The medical team was setting up a white quarantine tent beside the ship, as well as an electromagnetic force field around the hatch in the tenjin's undercarriage. The marines were all on full alert, present for the dual purposes of making sure that nobody broke the quarantine as well as ensuring that the ship's newest guest behaved himself. Seldon sighed to herself. She was fairly sure that last order was unnecessary but, like Drake and Doc Compton, she wanted to play it safe. Especially where Gil frakking Jerigan was concerned.

A few moments later they stepped through the last of the hatches into the hangar bay, and thus bypassed the majority of the chaos taking place farther forward. As they made their way toward tenjin four Seldon found herself pressing the headset over her ears. It was so loud in the compartment that even with hearing protection it was uncomfortable. She glanced to her right and quickly counted seven parked planes, three idling down, two being towed from the lifts to tie downs, and two more in the steamer, which left three unaccounted for. All of which meant the noise would be lasting for a while.

Continued...

[Scion Drakhar]

...continued.

As they approached the tenjin she noticed a new noise added to the din. It wasn't that she heard it so much as she felt it, as if the air pressure had just gone up half a millibar. An instant later she saw the white tent billow inward and understood that the medical team had just activated an air purifier that would maintain a negative pressure within the tent, thus helping to contain any germs should there actually be something to worry about. There were also ultraviolet lights and an enclosure within the tent that she recognized as a decontamination chamber. The sight of all those precautions together made the possibility of a biological attack suddenly seem all too real.

As they stepped up to the edge of the quarantine they found H'nt c'Pu standing at the edge of the marine perimeter with his arms crossed over his chest. He'd have seen the feed from the helmet cams, of course. And with that realization she wondered if Ea't s'Quid was already on his way.

Drake stepped up beside the broad Split. Neither the man nor the Split said anything, and their faces were so expressionless that they could have been masks. Yet they held each others’ eyes, and the intensity between them was so powerful that Seldon saw it affect crewmen and marines as far as ten meters away. After a moment Drake scowled, then nodded, as if responding to some bleak news that H'nt had just given him. H'nt looked away, as if he'd just said something that made both men uncomfortable and wanted to give Drake the space to be unsettled while retaining his dignity. A moment later they both turned to stare at the tenjin, and the white tent, without saying a single word to each other. Seldon sighed and looked away. She lived and worked with men. She loved them and admired them. She competed with them and was better at many of the contests that men engaged in than most men were. Yet there were still times when males were simply incomprehensible.

Just then there was a sudden spark and pop beneath the tenjin. Seldon glanced at the undercarriage and saw the tell-tale shimmer of an electromagnetic force-field encircling the hatch. She glanced from the force field to Kao t'Kt, who'd taken a position near Drake while the boss and the Necromancer's captain were having their telepathic moment, and was now surveilling the scene with his rifle at the ready and an expression so intense that it seemed as if he were daring a threat to show itself.

Seldon stopped and stood a few paces away, feeling strangely alone and out of place. Then she caught a whiff of Dal's cigar. She turned and followed the scent toward the lifts, where she saw the man pointing at something halfway up the enormous chain-gears built into the bulkhead. He was explaining something to one of his crewmen, and in that instant she understood why all of the hangar deck crew were able to bellow the way they did. A moment later the man Dal was talking to nodded his head in understanding. Dal promptly clapped him on the shoulder, and immediately turned toward a young woman standing halfway across the hangar deck. She was over fifty meters away in an environment that was so loud Seldon was having trouble hearing herself think. Dal hadn't even been looking in her direction and the only indication that she needed something was the frustrated expression on her face. Yet Dal was on it, and for some reason watching him made her feel a little better.

So she watched him while she waited. He made his way to the woman and tapped her on the shoulder. A moment, and several primitive sign gestures later and Dal nodded. He then flipped open an access panel at the rear of the truck while his deckhand watched what he was doing from over his shoulder. A moment later Dal reached over to the controls and Seldon chuckled to herself as the truck trembled and started to life. Dal then pointed at what he'd done, explaining mostly with his hands. A moment later the woman laughed at something Seldon didn't catch, then stepped up behind the controls and went back to work.

That was when Dal noticed her. Their eyes met from nearly eighty meters away and Seldon forced a smile. He returned it, although she saw the sadness in it, and made a gesture as if tipping a cap he wasn't wearing. A moment later he turned and started stumping off to solve another problem. She sighed as it occurred to her that she still hadn't bought him that drink. A moment later she thought of the face she'd seen in Randall's helmet cam and literally felt sick to her stomach. She didn't know why but she felt like crying and a moment later she realized that she was thinking of some friends that weren't around anymore; Calon Bro and Kleo Rana, Toki Ohneaim, Uma Selek, Jako Springer, Dasinos, Tissmaneos, and Holigis, and, of course, Aaron Slamer. With thought of Slamer she felt the same ache in her heart that had been plaguing her for the past several months. In that instant she thought she understood why the kid repeated the names of the dead to himself. It hurt. It hurt like hell. But what if that was a good thing? Weren't you supposed to hurt when the people that composed your life were gone?

Just then she noticed a sudden lurch from the steamer atop the foremost lift. A moment later the massive chained gears began moving as the damaged plane was being brought down from the trap. She glanced at Dal and saw him scowling. A moment later he was jogging toward the base of the lift. That's when she noticed a movement much closer to herself. She turned her head and looked at the undercarriage of tenjin four where a small procession was making its way down the ramp. Doc Compton, Jak Randall, Endo Pareii, and Lau t'Nnt were flanking the man they'd rescued as he made his way down the ramp. He was still wearing the EVA suit with the helmet in place and she guessed that the medical team wouldn't let him take it off until they were ready to put him through decontamination. Yet the lighting in the hangar bay was far gentler and, despite the worn surface of the helmet's face shield, she could see the man's face clearly.

"Holy crap," she whispered to herself. "It is you."

********

I mean how the hell do you prepare yourself for something like this? The last time I saw this son of a bitch he was smilin' at me on the bridge of the Credo et Amo. An instant later I materialized in a goddamn life pod just as the frakkin' ship goes nuclear behind me! I mean I didn't just think he was dead… I frakkin' knew it! I grieved for him! I mourned for him! I wept for him! Then, after four months of raisin' glasses to his memory, I got to stand there on my hangar deck and watch as the motherfrakker strolls down the ramp from one of my tenjins... and smiles at me.

********

Seldon watched the procession reach the bottom of the ramp and then disappear inside the tent the medics had set up at the bottom. Then she saw Drake moving from the corner of her eye. He was wearing the same slack expression she'd once seen on the face of a sleepwalker. He took two steps toward the quarantine tent, which made the eyes of the marine on guard grow wide and round. Then H'nt reached out and grabbed his arm. At which point Drake whirled toward H'nt with a snarl on his face. H'nt glared calmly back. Then Drake blinked and shook his head. When he looked up he glanced from H'nt to Seldon.

"It's really him?" he asked. She couldn't hear him but she was able to read the shape of the words in his mouth. He looked as small and plaintive as a child who'd lost his parents.

She held his eye and nodded. "Yeah," she said, knowing he couldn't hear her either. "It's him."

The kid blinked, reeling, then turned back to the tent and stared at it. After a moment he turned and looked around. Then he spread his hands impatiently. "WELL?!" he roared, just loud enough for Seldon to actually hear him. "SOMEBODY GET ME A GODAMN HAZMAT SUIT!!"

It only took a sezura for Kao t'Kt to relay the boss's demand to one of the marines inside the tent. But it took another mizura before they called back and told him that the medical team hadn't brought any extra suits with them. This was an oversight that Drake chose not to verbally comment on. His expression, however, made Seldon take a few steps toward him so she could prevent any impromptu murders. Kao t'Kt then used the communicator in his helmet to order a marine from the deck 5 security station to go to the med bay and procure two more sets of the baggy, white, hermetically-sealed, plastic overalls. After being assured that a suit was on the way Drake rolled his eyes. Then he began to pace. While he waited four planes powered down, which resulted in a dramatic reduction of the decibel level in the hangar bay. During this time Drake's expression grew darker and darker until Seldon started wondering if she should be moving backward instead of forward. Just as the fifth plane powered down, making it possible to actually hear people yelling to each other, Drake began to rant.

"Why the HELL is this taking so long?!" he complained, only barely audible over the roar of the remaining planes. He turned toward Seldon and Kao t'Kt with his eyes blazing. "We REGULARLY beam twenty marines in full combat armor along with all the weapons and tools they need KILOMETERS through space! Then wait while they liquify any resistance on their way to the computer core, hack the central computer, and turn control over to me! Then we ship over a bloody JUMPDRIVE!... along with all the energy cells my new toy needs to jump back to Senator's Badlands… and then wait while the marines install the damn thing before we beam THEM back over and jump both our new toy and our own bloody ships out of a usually hostile sector! And we do all that..!" another plane powered down just as he raised his voice another notch, "IN LESS BLOODY TIME THAN IT'S TAKEN TO FETCH ONE GODDAMN PLASTIC BAG WITH A BREATHING TUBE!?"

Drake was facing Seldon and Kao t'Kt as he bellowed this last bit of his condemnation. Which meant that he didn't see the tent flap part behind him as Jak Randall, Doc Compton, and Lucifer stepped through it.

"Oh calm down already!" Lu told him cheerfully, perfectly audible despite not seeming to raise his voice. Drake's face went slack. His eyes grew wide and round. He turned around like he was underwater. Lu met his gaze and smiled. "Don't you know what elevated stress can do to you?"

********

You know there are some moments that just defy description. I mean how do you describe the moment when your friend comes back from the dead? It's like up became down and hot is somehow cold. It's like trying to capture a sunrise or tell somebody who can't see what the color blue looks like. I mean what do I say? How do I describe what it feels like to see a friend that I frakkin' knew was DEAD… suddenly appear in front of me? I mean do I talk about the shock? The elation? Do I tell you about how I wondered if I was dreaming?

Or do I just tell you that I threw my arms around my friend and wept like a child?

********

For a moment Drake said nothing. His face was pale as a sheet and he stared at Lu as if expecting the other man to evaporate. Then, an instant later, he crossed the three meters to Lu and threw his arms around the man so quickly that he was embracing Lu before either Jak Randall of Doc Compton could move to intervene.

"Whoah!" Lu exclaimed, taken completely off guard. In that moment Seldon saw the expression on his face. His calm, steady trademark smile slipped and, for just an instant, she thought she saw tears welling up in his eyes. An instant later he put his own arms around Drake. "Hey," he said gently, "it's okay. It's okay."

The kid was shaking, and when he spoke his voice was not quite steady. "I thought you were dead!"

"I thought I was too," Lu told him, trying to smile while fighting back his own tears.

"Alright! Alright!" Doc Compton put a hand on the kid's shoulder and pulled him off the older man. "Let the man breathe, already! He's been through one hell of an ordeal and is still injured!" The doc pointedly looked Drake directly in the eye. "Including a few broken ribs."

"Oh shit!" Drake stepped back and let go of Lu as if the man was too hot to touch. It was then that Seldon noticed how thin the man had become. Lu was two or three centimeters taller than Drake and the last time she'd seen them together he had been a good five or six kilos larger as well. That difference was gone. In fact, looking at the two of them, Seldon was sure that Drake was now the larger of the two. Lu had always been lean. Seldon had once thought the man looked like someone had thrown him in a pot and boiled all the fat off him. But it was the lean of a cheetah... or a bullwhip; lean and hard, but deadly. Now Lu wasn't simply lean. He was thin as a rail. In fact he'd lost so much weight, so quickly, that his skin was actually loose.

The kid touched the other man's shoulder, as if still trying to convince himself that Lu was real. His mouth was working but nothing came out of it. "It's okay, Drake," Lu told him. "Really."

Drake shook his head. "I thought you were dead!" He said it as if it explained everything.

Lu just smiled at him. It was radiant and genuine, but also strained. Then Drake looked him up and down, and his eyes widened as he finally recognized the condition his friend was in. "It's okay, Drake," Lu told him, smiling as he shook the kid by the back of the neck.

"But..." Drake shook his head. "HOW?! How are you here?"

Lu blinked, then took a breath and finally smiled weakly. "Let me guess," he said. "You didn't find any of the other life pods from the Credo et Amo?"

The kid shrugged. "Some," he said, confused. "But I couldn't tell you who they were, and most didn't stick around after they found out I couldn't pay them."

Lu blinked, then shook his head. Then he met Drake's eye again. "So all this time you've been thinking that I saved you, alone, out of the twelve hundred people on the Credo et Amo?"

Drake blinked and his mouth fell open. That's exactly what he'd been thinking.

Lu shook the kid's neck again and chuckled. "I tried to save everybody, Drake." He shrugged. "Every single person I could get a lock on..."

"Including you," Drake smiled, but it was thin.

"Well… yeah!" Lu grinned at him. "I love ya, kid, but I'm not planning on going down with any ship, even one as pretty as that boreas..."

"Pretty?!" Drake's face screwed itself up into incredulous disgust. "That thing was hideous! It looked like a giant, neon termite!"

Lu chuckled again, weakly. Then he shrugged. "I liked it," he said.

"Well, then I'll get you another one..."

Lu chuckled and shook his head incredulously. Then he dropped his gaze. When he looked back up he glanced at H'nt. "Hey," he said. The Split responded with a deep serkavi. Lu smiled and responded in kind, although his own bow was somewhat stiff and awkward.

"It is good to see you alive, Lucifer."

"Thanks bud," Lu replied. "Toss any Teladi recently?"

H'nt bared his teeth in one of those terrible Split smiles while the marines and medics nearby exchanged confused glances. Then Lu and Kao t'Kt exchanged serkavi's. Then he met Seldon's eye. "Hey," he said warmly.

Seldon realized she had her hand over her mouth again and dropped it. Then she took a breath to steady herself. Then she shook a finger at the man. "If you make me cry," she warned him, "I will slug you." Lu blinked.

"Nobody's slugging anybody," Doc Compton told her. "Least of all my patient."

Seldon glanced at Compton with a look that clearly stated he was an idiot. Then she looked back to Lu as Compton shook his head and reached for his cigarettes. She looked Lu up and down pointedly. "You look like shit," she informed him.

"So did you the last time I saw you," Lu pointed out.

"I got shot by a giant robot," she told him. "What's your excuse?"

He shrugged. "The makers of that giant robot decided to play with me," he said, "and they break their toys."

She trembled and felt the burning in her eyes that preceeded tears. "I will slug you," she told him again, just as he hugged her.

"It's good to see you, Tasha," he said warmly.

"It's good to be seen," she replied by rote and returned the hug. She realized that she could feel his ribs through his shirt.

He stepped back and squeezed her shoulders. "No armor?"

She scowled, first at Lu, then at Drake. "Promotion," she stated sourly.

Lu chuckled, then nodded. He looked at Drake again, and when he did his eyes were sober. "I'm guessing we lost a lot of people?" he asked.

Drake exhaled shakily and nodded. "Yeah," he said. When Lu waited Drake dropped his gaze for a moment. When he looked back up his jaw was flexing. "Thousands," he said bitterly.

Lu winced and shook his head.

"Tens of thousands," Drake elaborated.

"The stations..." Lu whispered.

"Yeah," Drake said.

Lu took a breath and met his eye. There was both sympathy and sadness in his face. "I don't know if this will help, Drake, but most of the factory workers would have been taken alive."

"Alive?!" Drake echoed. Then he blinked. "Why would they..?"

"As slaves," Lu explained.

"Slaves?!" Drake's mouth fell open again. Then his face hardened. "I thought you Terrans were supposed to be civilized?" he snarled.

"Technically," Lu explained, "they'd be put in penal colonies. They would have been charged with terrorism. A terrorism charge lets the government bypass due process."

Drake's face was growing harder with every word. "So they give you a label and then do whatever they want with you?"

"Pretty much," Lu said with a nod.

"So they make their crimes legal just by makin' new laws?" Drake asked.

Lu shrugged.

"Wow," Drake shook his head bitterly. "You know when it comes to bein' lyin', cheatin' sacks of shit the Sol government is definitely a trend setter." He snorted. "Hell," he said, "compared with them I'm barely an amateur."

Lu winced at Drake's pronouncement.

Then Drake sighed. "But they are alive?" he asked and Lu nodded. "You're sure?"

"Are you kidding?" Lu replied. "When the USC captured those stations the politicians back home probably creamed their pants. Tens of thousands of skilled workers? Workers that they could effortlessly condemn and put to work? To the stuffed shirts calling the shots back on Earth that was like winning the lottery."

The kid's face went slack, then hardened. "If they're alive," he growled, "we can go get 'em."

"Oh, hell, Drake!" Lu laughed out loud. "You are something else! I swear I've… aiii!" He hissed and grabbed his side.

"Alright, that's enough!" Doc Compton intervened by stepping forward to put an arm under his patient's armpits. Then, to his nurse, "get me a gurney!"

"Hey, doc," Lu said, "it's okay..."

"The hell it is!" Compton cut him off. Then he glared at the kid. "Look, I know you're happy to see him but this man has been through hell! He's standing here with multiple broken bones, bruised kidneys, and the remains of one hell of an MTBI! That means his brain is bruised, in case you didn't know. So what this man needs right now is for everyone to leave him the hell alone and...!"

"No," Lu said. He said it softly but it was perfectly clear, and there was a quiet authority in his voice that made even Doc Compton stop speaking and look at him. "I have been alone long enough," he said and when Compton opened his mouth to argue with him Lu beat him to it. "I'll lie down, doc," Lu told him, "but I intend to walk to my bed. Once I'm there I'll accept your treatment. But I want to visit with my friends." He leaned forward a little while staring Compton in the eye. "Deal?" Lu asked and extended his hand.

Compton blinked and looked from the hand to Lu's eyes. Then he scoffed so expressively that Lu chuckled. "Fine!" Compton said and took Lu's hand, but then effortlessly pulled Lu off balance and shook a finger in his face. "But you're going right to bed! And I'm gonna put an IV in your arm to make sure you get the nutrition you need! And if you piss me off I'll put you into a medically induced coma for the next week until I'm sure that you can't break any more bones just by saying 'hi' to old friends!" He then gave the kid a look so dangerous that Drake actually took a half step backward. Then he looked back at Lu again. "Got it?"

Lu smiled that soft, steady smile of his and then gave the doc's hand a single, deliberate shake. "Got it," Lu told him.

"Well all right, then," Compton grumped and let go of Lu's hand. A moment later he was stepping away from Lu, lighting a cigarette, and growling at one of his nurses. "Escort him to room C and make sure he doesn't fall down and kill himself on the way."

"Yes, doctor," she replied. She then stepped up beside Lu, lifted his arm, and draped it over her shoulders. At the skepticism in his eyes she raised both of her eyebrows. "Just let me help you," she told him. "If you get hurt on my watch I'll never hear the end of it."

Lu nodded. Then he looked at Drake. "So where is everyone?"

"Brother in Savage Spur," H'nt told him immediately, then looked at Drake. "Complaining."

Drake rolled his eyes. "Of course he is..."

They started walking toward the port corridor when Lu stopped suddenly. He was staring at a crowd of crewmen, pilots, and medics near the damaged susanowa while wearing a curious expression. A moment later he glanced at Drake with a bemused smile, then promptly disentangled himself from the nurse and began strolling off toward the crowd.

"Hey!" the nurse exclaimed.

"Lu?" Drake called after him.

A moment later Drake, Seldon, Kao t'Kt, H'nt c'Pu, Randall and his marines, and the nurse assigned to keep him safe were all hurrying to keep up with the malnourished guy with the broken ribs.

********

Eri scowled and clenched her teeth. Even from across the hangar the damage to the plane was all too apparent. The deckhands were setting up mobile cranes to compensate for the damaged landing gear while a medical team tried to treat the injured pilot. As Eri crossed the hangar she saw Drakhar and a small entourage near the white tent that had been set up under tenjin four. For a moment she allowed herself to wonder about what new calamity the kid's stepfather had delivered to them. Just then, however, she didn't have the time to think about it. She could already hear the screaming of an enraged pilot and she was still forty meters away in a hangar bay filled with the roar of several active planes. There was a small crowd of deckhands and a medical team around the damaged susanowa. The deck crew was working quickly and efficiently to disentangle the plane from the damaged trap while the medical team looked put-upon and exasperated. Eri stalked into the center of the crowd.

"MAKE A HOLE!" she bellowed and watched the crowd part before her.

That's when she got her first good look at Ensign Rider. The woman was a few meters away from the front end of the damaged plane. She had blood on her face from a bleeding head wound, was clutching her right side, and seemed to be favoring her right leg. A medical team was attempting to get Rider to lie down on a gurney. Rider, however, was being an asshole. As Eri walked up she watched her pilot roughly shove one of the medics aside so that she could better scream at one of the nearby deckhands. Ripcord was standing right beside her, doing his best to hold the woman back from apparently attacking whoever she was screaming at. Several paces later Eri cleared the crowd. That's when she saw that it wasn't a deckhand Rider was picking a fight with, but Chief Cornell.

Oh you have got to be kidding me...

"Me?!" Rider was screaming. "The reason my plane is smashed is cos one of your spanner jockey's was jerkin' off instead of doin' their job! That thruster failed just as I was coming into the TRAP!" Rider thrust a finger at Cornell. "And it nearly got me KILLED!"

The Chief, who Eri estimated had nearly thirty kilos on Rider, was calm, but looked like a thunderhead on the horizon. The cigar clamped between his teeth was jutting upward at a belligerent angle. His brows were heavy and low, making his eyes look like gems glittering from within a pair of moss covered caves. Eri could see him slowly swelling, as if getting ready to chew her rookie pilot several new orifices. Rider, seeing this, already had her mouth open to scream back at the Crew Chief.

"ENOUGH!" Eri barked, instantly cutting off the next wave of abuse from her pilot. "RIDER!" The woman looked up in surprise. "STAND DOWN!"

Rider glanced at Chinomu nervously and took a step back from Chief Cornell, but she still had her chin thrust forward, as if spoiling for a fight. Eri stepped up in front of the woman and let the frost in her eyes speak for itself. After a moment Rider seemed to shrink a little. She put away her chin and then seemed to have trouble swallowing.

"You will report to medical," Eri informed her. "Until the doctor clears you for duty I don't want to know you exist." When the other woman opened her mouth as if to argue Eri simply narrowed her eyes.

Rider closed her mouth, swallowed, and then nodded. "Roger, ma'am," she said, "Report to medical, over."

"Dismissed," Eri said frostily and glared at the woman until Rider allowed the medics to put her on a gurney and wheel her away. Then she took a breath and glanced at Cornell. "Apologies," she said and Cornell arched one furry eyebrow. "I'll get that sorted out," she assured him.

Dal shifted the cigar in his teeth from one side of his mouth to the other and then arched the other eyebrow at her. After a moment, though, he nodded. He still looked angry and suspicious, but he went back to work commanding his crew.

Eri took a breath and sighed. Then she glanced at Ripcord and gave the man a nod of approval. He'd kept his head and had all along, despite increasing pressure from Rider to compete with her. Eri was secretly convinced the woman was infatuated with him and just didn't know how to express it. Either way Eri was over it. Until Rider could straighten up and fly right the woman was grounded.

With that thought she glanced at Chief Cornell. Just then the man, along with three of his subordinates, were up to their elbows in grease while trying to separate the susanowa from damaged decking of the trap. They were straining as they forced a jack into position, or used straight bars to lever pieces of the landing gear out of the way while others cut through a piece of the susanowa's front strut that had pierced the deck and impaled the electromagnetic coils beneath. It was dirty, demanding, physical work and it suddenly occurred to Eri that she might be able to ease some of the tension with Dal while also teaching her pilots some humility.

When she looked up she saw Warren 'Ripcord' Selek looking after the medical team with a frown. "Hey!" she barked at him. When he turned to look at her she curled a finger at him.

He stepped up attentively. "Ma'am?"

"I just wanted you to know that I've noticed your behavior and approve," she told him. "You haven't let her bait you and you've continued doing your job. Also," she nodded at Cornell, "you stopped her from doing something catastrophically stupid."

"Thank you, ma'am," he accepted the compliment. Then he glanced at something behind her and frowned with confusion.

Before Eri could turn around there was a sudden, and very familiar bellow from directly behind her. "YOU'RE OUT OF UNIFORM AGAIN, CADET!"

Without any direction from her conscious mind Eri immediately snapped to attention. Her head jerked erect. Her eyes focused on a point beyond an imaginary horizon. Her hands snapped to her sides, and she stamped her foot as her heels clipped together with enough force to be heard over the roar of the remaining active plane. Then her mind caught up...

~'Dafuq?!'~

...and a confused scowl fell across her face. This scowl was so vile that Ripcord actually took a step away from her. Eri slowly turned to look over her shoulder and found herself looking at the face of a man that simply could not be standing in front of her.

"Commandant?!" she heard herself ask, using the same tone she'd expect upon finding the Easter Bunny standing in her shower or Santa Clause buying porn on the Yaki shipyard. "The frak are you doing here?!" she demanded.

Commandant Féret calmly reached out and rubbed the sheepskin and leather collar of her bomber jacket between his thumb and forefinger. Then he looked at her with mock exasperation. "Seriously, Vampire," he said. "When the hell are you going to burn this rag?"

She blinked again, looked the man in the face, then looked him up and down and noted that he looked decidedly unhealthy. Then she noticed the gathering behind him. Drakhar, H'nt c'Pu, Seldon, half a dozen marines, and one very distraught nurse were all standing nearby. Seldon and the kid were both wearing the same slack expression that was two parts shock, one part incredulity, with just a dash of bewilderment for flavor. It then occurred to Eri that she probably looked the exact same way. She shook her head to clear it, then met Commandant Féret's eye again.

"No," she said, "really. What the frak are you doing here?!"

Drake stepped up beside Féret and looked from him to her and back again. "Commandant?" he asked and they both looked at him. "So I take it you two know each other?"

"Commandant Féret oversaw the flight school I attended back on Earth," Eri told him while staring her old CO in the face.

"Commandant…Féret?" Drake echoed, now looking at the man like he had two heads.

The Commandant took a breath, then winced, and finally sighed as he spread his hands. "Louis Charles Féret," he said, with a slight inclination of his head. Then he shrugged. "I had a French instructor when I went through flight school. He called me 'Lou-ee'. One of my classmates put that together with my middle initial and last name and started calling me Lucifer."

Drake continued to stare. He was looking at the Commandant as if he'd found a new species of boron.

"Aye," Eri muttered, glaring at the older man. "The frakking devil incarnate."

Lucifer chuckled. Then he shook his head. "Wow," he said. "You know I just realized that that was over fifty years ago."

Drake glanced at Eri and then back to Lucifer. "And you taught her to fly?"

"No," Eri told him.

"I beg your pardon?" the Commandant arched an eyebrow at her.

"He ran the entire base," she told Drake. "He taught thousands of..."

"Tens of thousands," Féret corrected her with a twinkle in his eye.

"… tens of thousands," Eri allowed, "of USC cadets to fly." The kid was now staring at the Commandant again. Eri looked at her old CO again. "That still doesn't explain what the frak you are doing here," Eri prompted him.

Lucifer glanced at her and smiled devilishly. He was practically twinkling when he turned back to the kid. "I see you've still got an eye for talent, Drake," he said and clapped Eri on the shoulder. "Vampire here was best damned pilot who ever passed through USCFTF* Nevada while I was in command but," he turned back to Eri with an evil gleam in his eye, "I'll be damned if the MP's weren't pulling her half-naked ass out of another officer's quarters every single week!"

"It wasn't every week!" Eri said defensively.

Lucifer arched an eyebrow at her. He was practically glowing with amusement. Worse still, two paces behind him she saw that Seldon's jaw had dropped wide open and Drake was now looking at her like he'd never seen her before. And to her left, Warren 'Ripcord' Selek raised both eyebrows and was now looking at her as if she was just another human being instead of God almighty. Another four meters behind him Eri saw Low-Angle and Deuce both open their mouths wide, and then instantly turn to each other to confirm what they'd just heard.

Eri looked 'Lucifer' in the eye. "You're still an asshole."

Lucifer chuckled and put an arm around her shoulders. "So," he said fingering the collar of her bomber jacket again, "when are you going to burn this rag?"

********

So yeah! Today has hit a new high on the weirdness scale. I'm actually standin' here runnin' the risk of just repeatin' myself until I get disgusted and visit the head to imitate a bulemic. 'Lu is alive! I thought he was dead! But he's alive! And I thought he was dead!'

Yeah. I-ahm… I'm not used to bein' happy.

Of course, Gin still isn't here. Neither are most of the people that Lu asked about either, although I did get to tell him that his brother's alive… and-ah... locked up in the psych ward on the Endless. Yeeeeah. I'll-ah, be arrangin' a visit for them tomorrow. Probably right around the same time I deliver Legion and the doc-sicle. Right now we're anchorin' up here in Spires of Elusion while we wait on Cornell's crew to fix the Necromancer. We can jump if we have to, but it'll cause Cornell to have to start-err… oh, crap... the-ah… repairs to the electromagnetic components in the damaged trap… or… something. I don't know. But we should be all right up here. As of this moment we've got the Predator, the Necromancer and her fighters, the Tartarus fighters, and the Osan'gar all ready to put the smack-down on anybody or anything that decides to annoy me.

Yeah-uh… Ea't decided he couldn't wait til we got back to Yaki space and jumped up here to meet us. He had to commandeer one of my freighters to keep resupplyin' him with jump fuel, but he got here. He visited Lu… and he's currently on the Necromancer... one bed over from Lu as a matter of fact. Apparently pissin' off a doctor is a stupid thing to do even if you are a mighty Split warrior.

Oh! And I discovered Lu's real name! Or, rather, Chinomu outed him. Yeah-uh, Lu apparently used to be some big-shot whoopty-do in the USC! I don't know much of what he did but he was like a general or somethin' and, at one point, used to run one of the USC's trainin' academies for new pilots… which, if I'm not mistaken, was supposed to be 'light work'. I don't know what he was doin' that was so stressful that overseein' tens of thousands of new pilots and personally runnin' their elite pilot trainin' program was considered a desk job by comparison, but-ah, yeah! That was the impression I got from, well… from Chinomu again, actually.

That was somethin' else I didn't see comin' today. Lu and Chinomu know each other. She apparently used to be one of his students. So while Lu is as forthcomin’ about himself as ever, which means you need a hammer, chisel, and crowbar to get more than a sentence at a time out of him, Chinomu was willin' to tell us… well, a little bit, anyway. About... Lu. On the other hand, Lu also had some interestin' things to say about Chinomu as well!

Yeah! Ha-ha! Apparently my CAG was once 'the most talented pilot' that Lu ever had… when she wasn't climbin' into bed with half the base! Haaaaaa! Ha-ha-ha! Hooo-yeah! I tell yah! That was not somethin' I ever expected to hear about her! Hoo-wee! I tell yah! It has been one strange evenin'.

Hell! It has been a long, strange bloody day! I still don't know what the frak crawled up t'Chk's ass. I don't know why Gil just gave me Lu… or how, for that matter! Lu doesn't either. After we got him to medical, Doc Compton made Lu get into bed and chased everyone else off. But, between the fact that I'm the guy that pays his salary and Lu's insistence, Compton reluctantly allowed me stay. So Lu and I sat and talked for awhile.

It was… hell, it was a lot of things. I mean the very first person he asked about was Gabe, obviously. Which was... awkward, but not-ahh… devastating. Then he asked about Alex Murray. That's when 'devastating' reared it's head. I had to tell him that I don't know. I don't know if she's alive or dead or where she'd be if she is alive. Knowin' Alex, though, she's hidin' out in some underworld somewhere, makin' somebody miserable. But I don't know. Then he asked about Ps'y. Same story. Then Z'ppt... who I, at least, got to say was alive… or had been... the last time I saw him. Then he asked about Wildcat, then Malcolm, and Kleo Rana... who is probably with Alex Murray, now that I think about it... and Calon Bro, and Sayleen Salek, and Jim Kellar, who is probably with Sayleen...

(sigh)

Well, you get the idea. Eventually he stopped askin' about individuals. Instead he just wanted to know if there was anyone else around who knew who he was. It was a weird moment. For some reason it seemed to make it really apparent how many people aren't around anymore. On the upside, there was a name I could give him.

'Legion,' I said, and for some reason that made him smile. But then he asked about Gin.

...

I'm-ah… I'm not gonna go over that conversation but… it was good. Lu didn't say much. Mostly he just listened. And when I told him that I felt like there was this giant hole in my chest he just smiled at me. It wasn't mockin' or condescendin', you know? He just… he understood. It hurts. It hurts alot but… I don't know… for some reason, after I told him about it, I felt better. The pain didn't go away. It's still here. It still feels like there's this great big piece of me that's just missin', and I've started drinkin' before goin' to bed so I don't lie awake thinkin' but… it's a little lighter, somehow. I don't know. I'm probably just makin' a mess of explainin' it. The point is I…

...I really missed that guy.

Unfortunately the fact that he's back is actually really scary.

Like... really scary.

********

Master Chief Warrant Officer Kao t'Kt stood just outside patient room C. He was cycling through the the different visual ranges available through his HUD and "listening" with auditory and atmospheric micro-density sensors in order to keep track of everything going on around him. Without enhancement the medical bay was a rectangular compartment roughly forty meters long by fifteen meters wide, which was then subdivided into smaller working and resting spaces for the medical staff and patients. At one end of the compartment there was a small corridor leading to six additional rooms where infectious patients could be quarantined. Using infrared imaging Kao t'Kt was able to see five heat sources through the walls and curtains around him as well as the movement of the sporadic foot traffic out in the corridor. Three of the heat signatures belonged to patients. One was the nurse who had assisted Lucifer into the bed he now occupied. The last was Doctor Compton, who was sitting near a collection vent at the far side of the corridor, reading and smoking a cigarette. Using ultraviolet imaging Kao t'Kt could see that the medical compartment was mostly clean and sterile, although there were several notable exceptions. Doorways, cabinets, and occupied beds showed many fingerprints pressed into the secreted oils of human or Split skin and a set of tracks made by a barefooted Teladi. There was also a line of spattered drops above the compartment's primary triage area. Kao t'Kt was fairly certain that it was arterial blood. Switching to electromagnetic enhancement showed the electrical currents behind the walls, deck, and lid of the compartment, as well as inside all the fixtures and electrical equipment throughout the space. It also showed the subtle "wings" around the patients and doctor caused by the toroidal discs of their own electromagnetic fields.

Behind Kao t'Kt, on the other side of a closed glass door, the Huruk'tar sat beside Lucifer's bed and the two men spoke. As they spoke Kao t'Kt listened. The auditory and air pressure sensors in his armor were attuned to every noise, feeling for every change in air pressure, every change in frequency density, every signal that might reveal the assassin before she could strike. It never occurred to him that he might be violating the privacy of the Huruk'tar, or the privacy of the two crew members several bulkheads aft of him who were currently having sex with each other, or the privacy of the crewman who was singing to himself as he did the ship's laundry. He had a job to do. That job was to preserve his lord's life. That meant he had to listen. As a consequence, Kao t'Kt heard every word spoken by the two men in the room behind him.

For a time they spoke about missing friends and comrades. Then they spoke of Gin Ookami and for a moment Kao t'Kt was distracted by thoughts of Ji'tSn. He continued to observe his surroundings but there was now an ache in his chest to keep him company.

"So walk me through it," the Huruk'tar commanded. "What happened to you after you beamed me off that bridge?"

"I was picked up by pirates," Lucifer told him. "The USC was paying bounties for us. So pirates were out in force looking for escape pods."

"So Gil sold you to the USC?"

"No," Lucifer replied. "Not Gil. These were just some run-of-the-mill pricks taking advantage of an opportunity."

"You know the USC was shootin' down lifepods, right?"

Lucifer sighed. "I didn't," he said, "but I could have guessed. The guy in charge of the commonwealth operation isn't exactly..."

"You mean the Wakiya?"

"No," Lucifer told him. "The Wakiya are one unit. They're spies and saboteurs. I'm referring to the General of the army or, in this case, a joint task force between the USC and ATF whose sole purpose is undermining the commonwealth governments, starting with the Argon Federation."

"Why the Argon Federation?"

There was a pause, and when Lucifer spoke again he sounded amused. "Come on, Drake. You're smarter than that. Besides, didn't you see the answer to that question in Rabeka Giorno's memories?"

"GEOSS thinks they're entitled to ownership of the Argon Federation because we're human," the Huruk'tar replied, sounding weary.

"No," Lucifer corrected him, "they think they're entitled to ownership of the gate network because they have the strongest military and most sophisticated intelligence network."

Kao t'Kt heard the Huruk'tar breathe for several moments. "And you know the guy in charge down here?"

"'Know' may be an overstatement," Lucifer replied, "but I met him about ten years back. That's about seven jazuras. At the time he was little more than a bureaucrat with oak leaves."

"Oak leaves?" the Huruk'tar asked.

"A major," Lucifer explained. "Oak leaves are the rank insignia."

"And you didn't like him?"

"No I did not," Lucifer replied emphatically. "There was something cold about him even then. He was civil enough, and an excellent conversationalist, but cold. Calculating. And he had a knack for manipulation. I could feel him testing me. He'd deliberately say something just a little off color to see how I'd react. Then he'd praise me for the same reason. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," the Huruk'tar replied, "he was seein' what he could do to work you."

"Exactly," Lucifer replied. "And he was good at it. I'm sure that I revealed far more about myself to him than he ever did to me."

"I think Giorno had some memories of him," the Huruk'tar stated.

"Do you still have them?" Lucifer asked. "The record I mean. Can you still review her experiences?" The Huruk'tar must have replied negatively because Lucifer sighed. "Damn," he said. "That would have been invaluable. You could review her memories and see him for yourself, how he moves and thinks."

"He's the one, huh?"

"Yes, Drake," Lucifer replied. "He's the one. He's the man that executed the attack on us. He's the on that convinced your stepfather to help him do it. He's the one in charge of undermining the commonwealth's resistance through social, economic, and political sabotage. He has nearly unlimited resources at his disposal... and he's taken a personal interest in you."

"I'm flattered," the Huruk'tar replied with a tone that indicated he was anything but. "Alright," he said, "well what can you tell me about him?"

There was a pause as Lucifer thought about it. "Well," he said, "I'm fairly certain that he's a sociopath. And considering the lengths he goes to in order to flatter himself I'd guess that he's a narcissist as well."

"I don't really know what that means."

"It means he's a cold, calculating opportunist and master manipulator with no moral compass or sense of mercy who thinks he's the only person in the universe who actually matters. Or, said another way, he could cut you into pieces just because he wanted to know what it looked like inside you and wouldn't feel any remorse whatsoever."

"Charmin'," the Huruk'tar replied sarcastically.

"He is, actually," Lucifer stated. "Very charming. Even when he's having you tortured and starved."

"He did that to you?"

"Not long after the USC realized who I was they turned me over to him. We were 'old friends', after all."

"So help me out, here, Lu," the Huruk'tar told the other man. "Explain this to me. You were in the USC's possession. You just told me that this guy, Erwyn, who's runnin' the show for the Terrans down here, took a personal interest in you..."

"So how the hell did I end up getting thrown out of Gil Jerigan's airlock?"

"Yeah," the Huruk'tar replied. "Exactly."

"I don't know, Drake."

"Well, what can you tell me?"

Both men were silent for a moment. Then Lucifer started speaking again. "They regularly used drugs on me. It wasn't uncommon for my hosts to sedate me in order to move or prep me for some new game..."

"Game?"

"That's what Erwyn liked to call it. He'd invent new ways of hurting me that wouldn't do any lasting damage."

"He tortured you for information?"

"No," Lucifer replied. "He tortured me to entertain himself. When we first met he was my junior. Which meant he had to treat me with deference. Now I'm a fugitive and he had the power to decide my fate. It amused him."

"Yet somehow you're back here," the Huruk'tar stated.

"Yes," Lucifer said. "And Drake?"

"Yeah?"

For a moment Lucifer didn't say anything. When he did his voice sounded less than steady. "You need to be careful."

"I have been, Lu," the Huruk'tar told him.

"No, Drake," Lucifer replied, "I mean with me."

"I don't understand."

"Erwyn is brilliant," Lucifer told him. "He likes puzzles. He likes games. He's also capable of doing things so monstrous that normal, healthy people can't even imagine."

"Well," the Huruk'tar chuckled, "I don't know if I'm either of those things."

"No," Lucifer chuckled, "you're probably not. But let me give you an example. Let's say that you're hunting an enemy and you know he's on a planet with several million other people. You can invest tens, even hundreds of millions of credits to hunt your target through the streets and jungles of an inhabited world... or you can blockade the planet, shoot down any ship attempting to leave the surface, and then release a deadly pathogen into the atmosphere that will kill every single person on the planet within a matter of weeks."

"You're saying this guy Erwyn would release the virus?"

"No, Drake," Lucifer replied. "I'm saying that he did."

"Oh!" The Huruk'tar sounded surprised. "Bloody hell!"

"You may not be either normal or healthy, but you do have a conscience... no matter what you may want to believe."

"I know! I know!" the Huruk'tar replied. "It's really annoyin'."

Lucifer chuckled. "It's a good thing, Drake."

"Lu...?" the Huruk'tar started, then stopped.

After a moment Lucifer prodded him. "Yes?"

"Never mind," the Huruk'tar replied. "Ask me again sometime." There was another moment of silence. "So," he went on, "the question is what could this guy Erwyn gain from sendin' you back to us?"

"Exactly," Lucifer said. "And Drake? The possibilities are scaring the hell out of me."

"What are you thinkin'?"

"I'm thinking about the planet where Erwyn released a deadly pathogen and killed over two million people in order to get just one guy."

"Yeah," the Huruk'tar sighed. "That's a little..."

"Terrifying?" Lucifer asked. "Agreed. Frankly, it's scaring the hell out of me."

"Well," the Huruk'tar told him, "Doc Compton's no slouch and I've got Legion lookin' for anythin' that might be a threat to either you or the fleet." There was a moment of silence before the Huruk'tar added, "you don't look convinced."

Lucifer sighed heavily. "I don't know, Drake. It's hard to be objective about a man who spent months making me scream just because he liked the sound of it. But... Erwyn is brilliant and a complete bastard and sending me back to you is like..."

"Yeah?"

"Do you play chess?"

"I have," the Huruk'tar admitted. "I'm not very good, though."

"Well giving me back to you is like sacrificing a piece," Lu told him, "and Erwyn is good enough not to do that unless he expects a winning exchange."

The Huruk'tar sighed. "Well," he said, "honestly this is makin' me feel a little better."

"What?! Why?"

"Cos now I can stop waitin' for that other shoe to drop. You're tellin' me that I'm not crazy. This is frakked up. But Lu?"

"Yeah?"

"I thought you were dead."

Lucifer chuckled softly. "I hear you."

Just then there was a sudden roar out in the corridor. "LU-SEE-FER!!"

Behind Kao t'Kt, Lucifer chuckled. "I do believe Ea't has arrived," he said.

"Yeah," the Huruk'tar agreed, "I'd say that was a safe bet."

A moment later Ea't s'Quid burst into the medical compartment. He was juggling a number of packages and dropped one as he came through the hatch. A subordinate, who Kao t'Kt assumed fulfilled the dual roles of bodyguard and general flunky, leapt forward to catch the box before it hit the deck. Ea't either failed to notice or simply didn't care. Either way he paid neither the package nor his subordinate any attention and, instead, immediately turned toward Kao t'Kt and stomped past both the alarmed nurse and the now annoyed doctor. Ea't made his way directly to Kao t'Kt and then waited, impatiently.

Kao t'Kt arched one eyebrow at him. 'What?'

"Door," Commander Ea't commanded, also sounding annoyed.

The doctor was coming down the hall behind him. "Now just hold on a minute!"

"Am!" Ea't informed him, making a great show of being frustrated with lesser intellects. "Also... failing! See guard!" Ea't then tossed another package at his flunky, who barely managed to catch it between the packages he was carrying under either arm and his chin. He glared at Kao t'Kt again. "DOOR!"

Kao t'Kt scowled. It was going to be one of those nights.

"Now you listen here," Doc Compton said, inserting himself between the two Split. "This is a medical ward and I have resting patients, including the man you're trying to barge in on..."

The hatch opened behind Kao t'Kt. The Huruk'tar had opened it. "It's all right, doc..."

"The hell it is!" Compton rounded on Lord Drake. "Do you people not understand how serious that man's condition is? He needs rest! Not a night of drinking."

"Who said anything about drinking?" the Huruk'tar inquired. The Doc grunted his disgust, rolled his eyes, and then roughly turned one of the packages in Ea't's possession so the Huruk'tar could read the label. "Oh," Lord Drake said, "I see."

"Friend return from dead," Ea't stated. "Must celebrate!"

"Even if it kills him?" Doc Compton demanded.

Ea't glared at the doc. "Him survive pirates, Terrans, AND working for Lord Drake! A sip of whiskey won't..."

"You feed him that rot-gut and you're gonna find out the hard way just how wrong you are."

Ea't s'Quid rolled his eyes. Then glanced at his subordinate, extended his fingers, and then curled one. 'Do.' The flunky promptly stepped forward toward Lucifer's hospital room.

"Now wait just a damn minute..!" Compton stepped forward to block the guard. The instant he was distracted Ea't promptly stepped past him into Lucifer's room.

"LUCIFER!' Ea't s'Quid roared.

At which point the doctor forgot about the subordinate and rounded on Commander Ea't again. "God damn it! What the hell is wrong with you?! Can't you see the man needs to rest?!"

"Hey doc," the Huruk'tar intervened just as Commander s'Quid was turning a blazing, green-eyed gaze at the doctor. "We won't feed him any liquor. I promise."

"That's not the point!"

"I'll be fine, doctor," Lucifer informed him.

The doctor opened his mouth again and the Huruk'tar cut him off. "And the truth is the fastest way to get rid of Ea't is just to get out of his way."

Compton looked from Huruk'tar to Lucifer and finally to Commander Ea't. "Fine!" he said. Then thrust a finger in Ea't's face, "but no alcohol! No bear hugs!" He pointed at Lucifer, "and he stays in bed! Got it?"

Ea't glanced from the doctor to his subordinate, who had finished depositing the packages and was waiting for instructions. He used the first finger on his left hand to gesture to the door. 'Go.' The guard fled, glancing at Kao t'Kt as he passed with a relieved expression.

"We've got it, Doctor," the Huruk'tar agreed.

Compton looked from Ea't to the Huruk'tar and scowled. Then he looked back at Ea't, who was starting to step up to Lucifer's bed. "And you!" he said, to which Ea't rolled his eyes. "Keep it down in here. I've got other patients beside him and they need their rest too."

Ea't opened his mouth to reply and the Huruk'tar politely moved the doctor out into the hall. "Thanks Doc," he said. "Will do."

Compton grunted noncommittally and fished his cigarettes out of a pocket. A moment later the hatch to Lucifer's room closed. The doctor briefly glanced at Kao t'Kt, then glared at the rifle in his hands. "If you have to shoot anybody," he growled while sticking a cigarette in his mouth, "try to kill them. I'm tired and don't really want any more work tonight."

Kao t'Kt arched an eyebrow at the doctor but Compton was already walking away, pausing only to light the end of his cigarette.

********

"It is good to see you alive," Ea't had tears in his eyes. He was not the type to be ashamed of such, no matter what his brother, adopted brother, sister... and ex-wife... might say. "Drake has been mourning you for months."

"But not you?" Lu asked.

Ea't snorted. "Old bird. Too tough to kill. Too mean to die." He lifted a pair of packages and grinned. "Brought presents!" The bottle of scotch was fairly new but also the best that Drake produced. The cigars though, those were old. They still bore the seal of the House of Dreams. "Best cigars, hand made, rolled between thighs of..." Ea't squinted. "Best not to think about it."

Other packages included a cloth hospital gown which was more comfortable than the standard plastic ones. And fuzzy slippers. Ea't blinked. "From H'nt, and C'lt."

"Who?" Lu asked.

"H'nt's found himself a bridle," Drake explained. "And I'm beginning to understand why that works. Split women are scarier than the men."

Lu chuckled.

Ea't scowled thoughtfully. Then shrugged, as if admitting a truth. "Can be. This one scarier than sister. Good fit for him." Ea't laughed. "What happened? Rumor says you fought evil pirate to escape. Look like fought shrike barehanded." Lu and Drake told him about General Erwyn and how it was Gil that turned Lu over. Ea't listened in silence until they reached the present. "Must brush up on recipes for Terran. Much cooking in our future."

"Err... you know that I'm Terran, right?" Lu asked him.

"Don't worry," Ea't told him patronizingly, "make exception for you."

"Uh-huh," Lu chuckled. "So what have you been up to?" he asked, shifting slightly to accommodate his ribs. "Terrorizing the entire Boron race I presume?"

"Split offended! Split terrorize EVERYONE!" Ea't grinned. Then he launched into a slightly embellished rendition of his battles with the Black Queen. Just as he was coming to the best part, the door opened and the doctor entered. "WHAT?!" Ea't demanded at roughly the same volume as one of the susanowas on the flight deck. "WHY YOU BOTHER INJURED MAN?!"

"You're loud enough to be heard in another sector, you nitwit!"

"MUST BE LOUD!" Ea't told him. "TELLING EPIC TALES!"

"I'm warning you!" Compton said, taking a step toward Ea't.

Ea't was instantly on his feet. "MIGHTY SPLIT WARRIOR HEEDS NO WARNINGS!"

Drake was already between them, preventing Ea't from reaching the old doctor. "We'll keep it down, Doc. I promise..."

The doctor ignored him. He was looking at Ea't with a considering expression.

"OUT!!!" Ea't roared, throwing his head back and pointing.

Compton blinked and raised both eyebrows. Then he nodded to himself as if making a decision. A moment later he left the room.

Ea't turned back to Lu and immediately continued to tell the tale of a mighty battle between himself and the forces of the Black Queen. Just as he was reaching a feverish description of the pitched battle between the Osan'gar and several of his dragons against the endless swarm of Boron fighters, the hatch to the hospital room opened again. Ea't, offended, turned to glare at Doc Compton again. "OUT!" he bellowed, then looked at Lu. "Story almost finished!" he promised.

"It's finished now," Compton said. "My patients need their rest! Not some lunatic Split shaking the floorboards out from under them while telling lies."

Continued...

[Scion Drakhar]

...continued.

Ea't blinked. A moment later he was out of his seat and passed Drake before the Huruk'tar could react. The doctor blinked and stepped backwards into the hall. Ea't stepped out after him, obviously intent on violence. Drake was following the Split out of the hospital room and had just started shouting at Ea't when the nurse smoothly stepped up behind Commander s'Quid with a naked and deftly handled syringe. An instant later Ea't slapped the back of his neck and turned with his mouth open and a threatening finger raised toward the nurse. He said not a word, however. Instead his eyes rolled up into his head and he began to fall with much the same motion as a felled tree. The doctor stepped neatly sideways as Ea't toppled to the tiles with a heavy thud! The nurse then capped the syringe and met the young CEO's eye.

"He'll be fine in a few hours," she told Drake with a smile.

Just then Kao t'Kt activated the rifle in his hands. It produced a terrifying, high pitched whine that instantly stopped every heart in the vicinity, including that of Chi t'Sn, Commander Ea't's bodyguard, who'd just started moving down the corridor with a grim and determined expression. Chi t'Sn, who'd heard the comment doc Compton made to Kao t'Kt earlier, looked from the rifle, to his commander, to the grim face of the rifle's owner, who was watching him intently. A moment later Chi t'Sn seemed to deflate, then collapsed back against the bulkhead he'd just vacated.

"You want a syringe, too?" the nurse asked him. "You can tell him we put you out right after we did him..."

Compton turned to Kao t'Kt and then gestured to Commander s'Quid's unconscious body. "You mind helping me get him off the floor?"

Before either Split could answer either question a sudden eruption of sound filled the compartment. It sounded vaguely like an impact hammer crossed with the snarl of a very large animal.

"Good lord!" Lu laughed, while the other humans stared at the snoring Split. "He's louder now than he was when telling his stories!"

********

Lu lay awake listening to his heartbeat, his breathing, the various muted sounds of the medical compartment, and the dull roar of the mighty Split warrior snoring across the hall from him. He couldn't sleep, and it wasn't because of Ea't despite the fact that the Split's snoring was truly horrific. Even with the hatches to both rooms closed Lu could still hear him. Ea't sounded like a pair of epilectic lumberjacks dragging some massive, ancient handsaw across the corpse of a giant oak. Most of the time it was simply obnoxious, but every five to ten minutes or so one of the lumberjacks would fall asleep for a few moments. Then the other one would have a siezure and snatch the saw across the hardwood, creating an atrocious, ripping hack that reminded Lu of a snarling bear or growling tiger. Then Ea't would go back to the steady, dragging chore of sawing through that oak for a while.

Lu didn't really mind, though. Oddly enough he even found it comforting. Ea't had always snored. He glanced between the half closed curtains, and through the glass windows of the hatch to his room. On the opposite side of the hall, through the hyperglass of another hatch, he could see the shapes of Ea't's boots sticking up past the end of his gurney. The big Split was snoring so violently that the tips of those boots were actually vibrating. He chuckled to himself but as he did he felt the tears spill from his eyes.

'Ah-hell,' he thought. 'Here it comes.

They'd been threatening ever since Drake's marines fished him out of the black.

'No,' he thought, 'that's not true.'

He sighed and admitted the truth to himself. They'd been threatening since the moment that marine, Randall, smiled at him. Lu took another deep breath. It came back out as a trembling gasp. Despite what Jerigan said, or maybe because of it, Lu had fully expected to either be killed or worse for not agreeing to help him with whatever it was he really wanted from Drake. Upon seeing the space suit he was to wear his first thought was that he was about to be used for target practice by Gil's half drunken pilots, probably while Snake-Eye taunted him over the com. As deaths went, he'd thought, he could do worse. It might be humiliating, but it would at least be quick. But then he'd seen the transponder attached to the back of the suit. The transponder coupled with the lack of a comm system and maneuvering thrusters meant he was being thrown out into space… to be found. Which is when he started thinking about fates worse than death, like slavers... or the USC.

Yet, even knowing what likely awaited him, he never wavered. He'd endured the impatience and cruelty of his captors for months without ever even considering giving them what they wanted. It wasn't because he was stronger, or tougher, or imbued with some special resistance to pain. He simply understood the meaning of the existential concept; 'sine qua non'. Or, said another way, he knew that there was a part of himself he could not accept losing, a part of himself without which nothing else could matter. So the tattooed bullies that Gil ordered to throw him from the ship showed him their evil, leacherous smiles and accused him of being too stupid to know what awaited him. They made terrible suggestions, attempting to inspire his imagination and break his will. He endured their sadism without a word. The truth was that he understood the game they were playing better than they did.

Lu shifted a little in bed to ease the stress on his ribs and stared out into space. He took another breath and sighed heavily. He wanted to sleep. He really did. He just couldn't do it. The doc had given him something that was supposed to transform all of his aches and pains into something distant and unimportant as well as a sedative that should have put him to sleep. Neither was working. Despite the weight of his exhaustion, and the sluggishness of his thoughts, Lu just couldn't quite reach the void. He felt as if there were things moving in the back of his mind, whispering just at the edge of his hearing. Once, decades ago, he'd spent a few weeks at the end of summer in British Columbia. Late that September there had been a week when the sky had been grey and boiling with clouds. The leaves on the trees, the pine boughs, the shrubbery, even the flat, heavy monkey grass decorating the cabin's front lawn, all seemed to be reaching for the sky. The late fall foliage had been dry and brown and brittle as it quivered in every breeze and gust of air. It was as if the whole world had been holding its breath, and it lasted for nearly a week. Every moment of every day for that entire week he'd waited for the storm to break, for the waves to grow huge and heavy upon the shore, for the skies to finally open up and lash the world with wind and rain. Instead it was just day after day of that tense, lingering, endless expectation. That's what the inside of his own mind felt like as he lay in the hospital bed aboard the kid's frigate.

He took another breath and felt it tremble below his ribs. Once upon a time he'd been in the business of convincing people to sell their souls. It was never phrased that way, of course. It was never discussed that way. It was never even mentioned. Yet Lu knew the truth. He'd seen people sell the only part of themselves that really mattered for as little as a bag of potato chips or a sip of water. He'd been the one buying.

For what will you betray your loyalties?

For what will you betray the nation you belong to?

The organization you work for?

The people you love?

Will you do it for money?

What about revenge?

Will you do it because you've convinced yourself it is the 'right' thing to do?

What about for something to eat when you're starving?

Or a sip of water when you're dying of thirst?

Will you talk in exchange for another breath when it's being denied to you?

What about in exchange for your interogator removing the knife from your ribs?

Or if he'll let you keep your genitals?

Will you tell them what they want in exchange for a shower?

What about after you've been chained to a wall for so long that you're covered in your own filth?

What about for a quick death?

Or to spare your children?

In retrospect he always knew what he was doing. His first victory had been just a password, but that password had allowed access to the network of a lab modifying nanite algorythms. He'd 'celebrated' the victory by getting so drunk that he'd had a hangover for two days. As time passed that moment, the moment when his target, or mark, or subject finally gave in and gave him what he needed whether that was an answer to a question, a document, or password, or an agreement to do a specific thing at a specific time... whatever it was… that moment slowly stopped being a victory. As time passed he stopped celebrating, stopped congratulating himself, and stopped pretending that he felt good about what he was doing. Those moments stopped being victories and simply became 'just part of the job'. Then, somewhere along the line, they became 'the right thing to do'. He'd heard and given a lot of reassurance that sounded just like that. "It's 'the right thing to do'. You're 'helping us' 'stay secure', 'stay ahead', 'stay safe'. You're 'making sure the bad guys don't get ahead of us'." Rationalizations to stave off the conscience were common. But then, eventually, the rationalizations failed... and he found himself awake in the dead of night, wrestling with thoughts that wouldn't leave him in peace, listening to the whispers of doubt from the shadows of his mind.

Eventually he saw that moment, that 'victory', for what it was. It was not a victory but a tragedy. It something abhorrent. In the end he realized that a person's integrity is their very center and substance. For all intents and purposes their integrity is their soul. That one change of perspective transformed everything. Afterwards he was no longer able to see himself as 'one of the good guys'. He was no longer the hero in his own story. He wasn't the noble warrior doing what needed to be done, or the general making the hard but necessary choices. Instead he was an extension of oppression, an agent of chaos and death, a catalyst of deciet, corruption, betrayal, disgrace, and despair. In one of his most morbidly romantic moments, he saw himself as the demon at the crossroads offering deals written in blood on vellum made of human skin. Three days after that everything changed.

He'd been the USC's ambassador to the Oort Cloud. Officially responsible for maintaining relations between GEOSS and the large number of mining colonies that worked sixty to a hundred thousand AU from Sol. Unofficially his job was to keep the ice, silicon, and ore flowing back through the relays toward Earth… by whatever means necessary. The workers were complaining about conditions and pay while pirates attacked ships and raided supply lines. It took him exactly one meeting with the head of one iron ore mining colony to realize that the disgruntled workers and the extremely competent pirates were, in actuality, the same people. In less than six months he'd gathered enough evidence to both shut down the pirates and bring all the ringleaders up on charges. At the same time he'd also ascertained that the workers were, in fact, understaffed, underpaid, in need of new equipment, desperate for time to perform necessary maintenance, and were hijacking their own shipments in order to buy themselves that time by sending the stolen material back as new product. Within his final report he'd included a three page argument for giving the miners what they really needed, namely more manpower, more specialists, more and newer equipment, more money, better accommodations… in short everything they were asking for.

Exactly twelve hours later his orders came back from Lunar Station. They were lengthy, detailed, and explicit. They also could have been summed up with four words: to hell with them. He was ordered to execute the pirates, which was defined as any person who crewed, maintained, or supplied the ships used in the piracy of company materials as well as any person who'd sheltered, aided, or abbetted any of the above. Which more or less included every single person in three mining colonies. Said another way he'd just been ordered to murder nearly a hundred thousand people. Of course, that was assuming he was to spare the children. If not the number was closer to a hundred and fifteen thousand people… who were fighting for nothing more than fair treatment. He could still remember the man who recieved those orders, the man who recieved them and began working to carry them out. When he did he usually felt sick, cold, and slimy, as if he were sweating some kind of industrial lubricant through his pores.

For just shy of seventy hours he'd continued to do his job. He'd planned and carried out operations to definitively identify every single last person associated with the piracy. He intended to legally document every last detail of the atrocity he'd been ordered to commit. Every fact would be verified. Every report would be authenticated. Every document would be checked not only for content but also for spelling, grammar, and format. Looking back he was never able to tell if that obession with correctness was his conscience trying to prevent him from carrying out his orders, or his ego attempting to prove to himself that what he was about to do was not actually a crime. Whichever it was, his attention to detail resulted in a delay of three days.

On the third day he experienced grace. It was surprisingly mundane. He'd been planning an ambush, which meant he couldn't let the 'bad guys' know he was onto them. So he'd continued to act as if everything was normal. That meant acting as the official USC ambassador to the Oort Cloud. That, in turn, meant meeting with important people such as the Union Leaders of the various mining colonies in order to continue diplomatic relations with the colonies they represented. One such Leader was a man named Wolfram King. King was an intelligent, charismatic man with a firm handshake, grand smile, jovial laugh, and eyes about as cold and hard as the ice asteroids he mined.

On the morning of the third day Lu met with King. Before that day every time the two of them met Lu'd noted how hard the man's gaze was. Even when King was laughing, smiling, or clapping him on the shoulder he had a look in his eyes that would have been just about right were the man murdering someone. King was also one of the principle directors of the piracy Lu'd been ordered to eliminate, which meant the man's execution order had already been written, signed, sealed, copied to Lunar Station, and was only awaiting Lu's command to be carried out. Which meant their meeting was complete malarkey. Both of them smiled. Both of them lied. Both of them talked about their commitment to each other and a grand future of cooperation. And after twenty minutes of lying through his teeth Lu got up, left the man's office… and nearly got run over by three small children and an apologetic mother. Lu turned and held the door open for her and when he looked up he saw King. The man's arms were thrown wide as his son ran up to him. He smiled as he lifted his oldest boy off the floor. His face was radiant as the boy showed him some hideous sculpture he'd created in school. King's eyes were radiant with love.

Then the man noticed him watching and Lu saw him for the first time. Terror lived behind the man's eyes; not for himself, but for his family. In that instant Lu understood. King knew exactly who and what the Ambassador really was. He knew about the investigation. He even knew what orders Lu had been given, not because he'd seen them or had a spy in Lu's organization, but because he saw the nature of the situation clearly. Lu never learned what King saw in his face just then, but an instant later the man smiled at him. It was simple, honest, unguarded, full of terror, frustration... and hope. It was also completely without shame.

In that instant Lu'd felt the first cracks in his resolve. Later that day he supervised the interrogation of a man named Sheldon Fastrick, who'd participated in relabeling some of the stolen ore so the iron mine could ship it out as new product for the second time, all to buy time for critical repairs on their facility's production line. Unbenownst to the miners the transport ship had been met and boarded by Lu's own team before it could reach the relay. The ore was then doped with a harmless radio-isotope that would make it easy to track, easy to follow, easy to monitor, and reveal anyone in the production facility who'd come in contact with it after the pirates stole it. In other words, when they picked up Sheldon Fastrick they had him red handed. Literally. Because of the radio-isotope the man's hands lit up bright red on the sensors. So they picked the guy up on his way home from work and began interrogating him, not because they needed the information, but simply because Lu was dotting 'i's' an crossing 't's'. He wanted as many of the 'criminals' to finger each other as possible. Before the interrogation started he'd known exactly what would break the man. His fourteen year old son had participated in unloading the radioactive ore. So it was just a matter of applying the right pressure and waiting for reason to trump stubborness. Yet just as the 'interview' started, when Lu first saw the man strapped to the ugly metal chair in the interrogation chamber, he saw that same look in Fastrick's eyes that he had in King's eyes. The guy knew he was caught. He knew he what he was facing. And because of it, he was terrified. He was also not ashamed. He knew what he'd done was right. He knew he'd done the right thing, and he held his head up and met the eye of his interrogator.

For a little while, anyway...

Thirty eight minutes later Sheldon Fastrick, a balding, red-haired man with a fourteen year old son, was sobbing as he signed the deal they offered him. He was no longer afraid. The deal he'd made had saved his son. But the shame in his eyes was unbearable. Lu wasn't able to even look at it. He was crumbling and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Ten hours later, shortly before zero five hundred the next morning, after a night without sleep, a fifth of Tenessee whiskey, and while bandaging a hand that was cut, bleeding and broken from the punch that shattered his bathroom mirror, Lu finally accepted that he could not continue to do the job he'd been given.

At that moment he was a Brigadier General and one of the most decorated soldiers in the USC. He was also an appointed ambassador, on a first name basis with twenty three heads of state, and had a golf game scheduled with the Prime Minister of Japan later that month. It never happened. The day that game was supposed to take place he was in the commonwealth, a fugitive wanted for a list of crimes that ranged from conduct unbecoming to high treason against the Government of Earth and the Outer Solar System, with pages of additional charges that ran the gamut between the two extremes, including the murder of a subordinate and the sabotage of a USC military operation. There were also a hundred thousand people still alive because he'd exposed the conditions the outer rim miners were working under instead of carrying out his orders. As a result Lu discovered that he was able to look at himself in the mirror again.

In the years since there had been plenty of opportunities for him to sell his own integrity. In fact there were so many opportunities to betray his conscience that there were times when it was easy to wonder if there really was a devil, or demons, or some malignant force operating behind the scenes to trick the desperate or foolish into destroying themselves. As time went on he found himself contemplating those moments, their nature and purpose, and where he couldn't saw one way or another whether temptation and stupidity were the constructions of a malevolent entity or simply an evolutionary consequence, he did know that there were choices that cost a person so much that any life lived after that price wasn't worthy of the name.

'Sine qua non', he thought again. 'Without which not. Without his integrity, without the spark at the center of him to define who and what he was, his life was not worth having. So Gil's bullies laughed at him. They told him he should reconsider the boss's offer. They told him that 'at least he'd have the rest of his life to regret making the wrong choice'. They called him insane and stupid and insisted he didn't understand what was awaiting him. And when the airlock opened he stepped into it of his own volition. And when the outer hatch opened, and the last of the air pressure pushed him off the ship, he surrendered. He accepted his own death. He accepted that his life did not belong to him, that he might be about to die in the black, or enter a life of humiliation, servitude, and torture. But he was also at peace. His integrity was intact. His conscience was clear. He would go to whatever fate was in store for him without regret. In that moment he thought he was ready for anything.

He was wrong.

Lu chuckled. It came out as a silent, wracking sob. A pair of tears spilled over his cheeks. He'd been thinking of Sheldon Fastrick when the marines reached him. He'd been wondering if a man carried shame with him through death when the big marine made him look at him. At first he'd thought it was just another act of sadism, 'look at the bright light, birdie!' and steeled himself for more cruelty to come.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, grace shone upon him again. The marine dimmed the torch on the side of his helmet and, as his eyes cleared, Lu realized it wasn't the light the marine pointed at but the camera beside it, meaning it was pragmatism, not cruelty. Then the man's face shield depolarized, becoming transparent, and lights within his helmet began to illuminate his face. In that moment Lu was stunned. He'd been expecting a Yaki pirate, a bully with tattoos and piercings to stare at him with cold cruelty in his eyes. Instead he saw the handsome, athletic face of a professional soldier... and the man was smiling at him, not with cruelty, but with warmth and reassurance.

That was when Lu felt himself start to crumble. He'd been ready to die. He was calm. He was still. He'd surrendered to any possibility... save one. He knew that he would forever be guilty of the evil he'd committed. He knew that he would never live long enough to outlive his shame. But he'd managed to reach his end without adding any more to the sum. He was able to leave the world with his soul intact.

Only instead of death... he was offered kindness.

Lu sniffed and wiped the tears from his face. That one smile completely undid him. It was the pebble bouncing down a mountainside, dislodging the landslide. He felt something surge within him at the sight of it. A terrible, desperate hunger leapt up out of the deepest, darkest places within him, and he gasped with the force of it. His breath and belly trembled. Tears welled up in his eyes. It was hope. Like a candle in the dark, igniting all the fury and power of life continuing to resist death for another moment. In the face of that desperation his serentiy was like a crystal palace, a house made entirely of glass, and hope was bringing down the mountain upon it.

Seeing that marines smile caused dangerous thoughts to explode in his mind. Each thought was a question, each question a hope, and each hope another boulder hurtling down the mountain to shatter the palace.

'Am I really...?!'

'Could these be...?!'

'Did Jerigan actually...?!'

Where am I...?!

And with each thought, each question, each desperate act of reaching, the avalanche swept more of that house away. And every thought was just a variation of the one thought, the one question, the one hope. And when he recognized it he felt his shame crash down upon him, crushing him under the weight of all his crimes.

'Am I safe?'

Lu wrapped his arms around his chest and trembled. Tears were streaming down his face and he felt the emotion ripping upward from his belly. He thrust his fist between his teeth and bit down as he sobbed. He had no right to safety. He had no right to the joy he felt as every clue added up to the only possible answer. He saw the ships nearby; a griffin sentinel, and a mammoth class TL, one of the new Yaki Kariudos, and a monstrous TL acting as a carrier and base of operations for the mining ships nearby. It was an odd fleet composed of salvage and opportunity. But the fighters were all susanowas and tenjins, and they were both in good condition and flying in formation, something most pirates couldn't be bothered with. The mining ships were efficient, cautious, and well maintained, meaning their crews were well trained and well disciplined. Even the marines beside him were wearing top notch gear. All of it added up to something both impossible and familiar.

Then he was disembarking the tenjin. And there was Drake! Drake, who'd managed to find another eye somewhere! Drake, who was looking at him with so much love on his face that Lu thought he would break at the sight of it.

Then the tests began. The doctor took samples of his blood, urine, hair, and skin and began performing all the various tests and procedures they could to see if he was a danger to the fleet. Which is precisely when Lu began to worry. Erwyn was behind his return. Rik Erwyn... the pale, smiling, soulless bastard who'd tortured him for months... had sent him back to his friends?

There was only one explanation that made any sense. The instant it occurred to him he was sure that it was true. Within him the crystal palace of his serenity was gone, smashed to ruins by his own hope and desperation, but it was nothing beside the absolute certainty of Rik Erwyn's intention. The son of a bitch had come up with a way to use him as a weapon. Which meant that instead of peace Lu had horror. Instead of atonement he was consumed by self loathing.

Eventually his emotions wore themselves out. In their aftermath he stared at the soft white ceiling tiles and listened to himself breathe. He could hear the sound of air exiting a vent above him, and the muted, if still horrid, sounds of Ea't snoring across the hall. After a few moments he wiped his face and nodded to himself. He would have to convince Drake to take precautions, and if the the kid would not then Lu would just have to do it for him.

********

"Dockmaster?" S'jar t'Chk bared his teeth in a gruesome grinning expression that almost didn't look human. "What can I do for you tonight? Oh WAIT! Let me guess. You're calling to beg me off the boy? NO! DON'T! STOP IT! You're HURTING him!"

Thane waited for S'Jar t'Chk to finish entertaining himself.

"Oh! God!" T'Chk complained, sighing dramatically. "You're no fun at all! Okay, fine! What do you want?!"

"What do I want?" Thane echoed, like a roll of distant thunder. "And here I was meanin' t'ask you the same question."

"Me-ee?" S'jar t'Chk asked with wide eyes, pressing the tips of all ten fingers to his chest. "Well, I want a big pink pony with a fluffy tail and a golden saddle! Oh, and the re-release version of the original Beatle's anthology! And, hmm, there was one more thing... oh yeah!" T'Chk's expression transformed in the blink of an eye. Veins leapt up to squirm beneath his skin and spittle flew from his mouth. "A GREAT BIG BOX OF GO FRAK YOURSELF!!!"

T'Chk then paused to observe Thane's reaction. There wasn't one. He scoffed, mimicking disgust, and leaned back into his chair. "Or," he shrugged, "you can just give me everything the kid's made off the nividium so far aaaand half of all his future profits. How much HAS he made off that nividium, anyway? I ask strictly for accounting purposes..."

"That's between you and him. If you want to..."

"Then why the hell are you calling me?!" T'Chk snarled. Then his eyes went wide and round as he adopted his vacant expression again. "Unless... hmmm... could it be that you're afraid your cute, floppy haired little golden boy is about to GET EATEN?!" With the last two words S'jar t'Chk seemed to transform. His voice dropped several octaves and his teeth flashed like the snarl of a predator.

Thane sighed through his nose. Over the past few jazura he'd been watching t'Chk's persona evolve. Sometimes he came across as a cultured sophisticate, a man from a decent background with an ivy-league education. Other times the pure savagery on the man's face was enough to make Thane wonder if the fool really was losing his mind.

"So what's your plan, t'Chk?" Thane asked him. "Are you goin' to do to him what he did the harridan? Then cast him from your clan so you can seize his assets?"

S'jar t'Chk's lips began to slowly expose his teeth. "Why Thane," he crooned, "what a terrible thing to suggest."

Thane stared the other man in the eye and waited. After a moment t'Chk's smile slipped and he dropped his gaze just for a moment. An instant later, though, he looked back with angrily bared teeth and his eyes showed the whites all around their irises. "What's it to you, anyway?!" t'Chk demanded.

"That boy's worth a lot of money to me..."

T'Chk practically lunged at the screen. "HE'S MINE!" he roared, spraying more spittle at the camera. Thane winced and clenched his jaw. He had to resist the urge to wipe his face. T'Chk shook a finger at the camera. "He's mine and you can't have him! I brought him into the Yaki! I made him part of my clan! I helped him get his footing!" He leaned in so close that Thane could see the lights on t'Chk's desk reflected in his eyes. "I fattened that little piggy up, Thane. I did! Which means I'm the one that gets to eat him now that it's time for the slaughter!"

"And my nividium?"

"I think you mean MY nividium," t'Chk countered. "Which means you may want to start being nicer to me, Thane."

Thane reached out and closed the channel. He took a breath and let it out with a heavy sigh. Then he looked down at Maggie, who was sitting between his feet, looking up over her shoulder at him with worried, soulful eyes. Thane patted her shoulder and smiled. "Don't worry, Maggie me darlin'," he told her with a warm smile, then touched the holographic screen and activated the recording of his conversation with t'Chk. A moment later he nodded with a bitter smirk. "It's all gonna work out just fine."

********

USCFTF = United Space Command Flight Training Facility

[Scion Drakhar]

Hey guys,

a couple quick thoughts from the author. First of all I'd like to thank Nyito, once again, for all her help fleshing out this story, for her honest feedback, and her insight. I'd also like to thank Triaxx for continuing to help me see inside Ea't's head. It's a little scary in there and I'd rather not wander unsupervised. As for the rest of you, thanks for continuing to read this tale, and thanks for dropping in to tell me.

On that note, I have one last thing I feel the need to comment on:

BlackArchon, I appreciate the praise but I think your gratitude may be a bit premature. Seldon and Chinomu both walk and talk within my mind and the mind of another author. It's uncertain where their relationship may take them seeing as both are bisexual, both like, respect, and admire the other, and both have a lot in common considering their command positions. They have similar stresses that they feel safe airing in the others' presence. It's very possible that under the right circumstances "things" could happen.

PS: I happen to have a large number of lesbian friends who might have several bones to pick with you about the notion of lesbian sexual relationships being cliche.

Just sayin'.

PPS: Oh! And for those of you who are interested Prodigal Son just broke 2000 pages.

Anyway, cheers all! And happy holidays!

[Triaxx2]

Split say: Wander in Ea't's mind, bring rope.

Wise Split say: But expect to find rope anchored to self.

They're only cliche if done badly. I know that first hand.

I adore that description of Ea't snoring. Though now I have the scene in my head of H'nt going through for some reason, hearing it, and congratulating the Doctor on making the snoring better.

"I find it difficult to believe it was worse."

"Believe."

[cyk1682]

Scion another great chapter.

Ive been reading this since way back in 2012 with the like 5th post of the original from nothing. And I have to say your post make my nights on the overnight shifts, Though my coworkers might think i'm crazy now for the cry of joy when Lu was back. I haven't touched an X game in a couple of years but I always come back to check on the thread. Its been a wild almost 5 years.

Thank you for all the pages and I hope you can keep it up until your satisfied with the conclusion.

[Nathancros]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


Scio you amazing devil! i actually got a few tears in my eyes when lu came back!

GREAT chapter there, i wonder if we will go and save the people who got enslaved

Also. we need to deal with T'Chk, hes starting to anger me


{Some "OOOOOOOO" removed to prevent page stretching. - Terre}

EDIT: Love you too Terre

[Jonzac]

Scion,

Amazing chapter and story. I watch for four series. David Weber's Honorverse and Safehold series, Terry Goodkinds Sword of Truth series and yours here.

Once again amazing work.

[jericho89]

Lu's back!!!!! Scion that was a heck of a Christmas present!

[Zaitsev]

Scion, your description of Ea't's snoring made me laugh so hard I think I've cracked at least four ribs. I had some very vivid mental movies of both epileptic lumberjacks and the noise Ea't was making bouncing around in my head for a while, and the whole thing was just hillarious. Other than that, amazing chapter.

And yeah ...

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

That is all.

[Olterin]

Ladies and gentlemen, we're BACK! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Olterin goes to read a good-night christmas chapter

[Scion Drakhar]

Glad to hear that we could make these holidays just a little bit better. Apparently I was inspired by Ea't's snoring.

cyk1682 - From what I understand you're in good company. Zaitsev has apparently convinced his neighbors that he belongs in a rubber room. Gosnell used to tell me how tired he was the next morning after I'd post late at night. And Olterin has rolled his eyes at me more than once for the length, timing, and content of these posts. Specifically the cliffhangers.

Jonzac, that is some grand company I share. Thank you for the praise. Thanks even more for still checking in. I still miss the Chief.

Okay, not sure when the next chapter will hit or exactly what's going to be in it, but in the near future we are going to witness some fairly dramatic changes. Oh and Drake might get to use his new sword...

[Triaxx2]

Yes, please. All of the Swish-Swish-DEATH.

Hopefully soon I'll have the spare cash to put my hands on a new laptop so I can write again. I did one or two chapters, but I'm on hold because it's so hard to play and write on the same computer.