“Oh my,” the Krell said, voice projected from the front of their armor as they made several wild gestures. “Cuna of the Department of Species Integration! I did not expect to find you here. My, my.”
“I left a specific annotation on the report, Winzik,” Cuna said. “Mentioning the arrival of this pilot. She is from one of the species I’ve invited to try out for our program.”
“My, my. And is this our emissary? I did not even know you were coming. You must think us so disorganized! Our departments normally communicate with one another much better than this!”
I stepped out from behind Cuna. I didn’t need anyone to shelter me, particularly not an alien I didn’t trust. But at the same time…one of the Krell. Talking directly to me.
I knew, logically, that KRELL was an acronym for Ketos redgor Earthen listro listrins, the alien name of the police force that watched my people. The race of beings like this one was called the varvax. I knew all that, but still couldn’t help associating these little crabs in the crystalline armor with the word Krell.
The human lingered behind, and was drawing immediate attention from those around us on the street. While nobody had given me a passing glance during my walk here, a variety of different alien species were gathering to gawk at her and point with tentacles, antennae, or arms.
“A human,” I said.
“Don’t worry!” said Winzik. “This human is fully licensed. I am sorry I had to bring her, but you see, there is an item of much concern…not that I wish to be forward or aggressive…but an item of much concern we must discuss.”
“You didn’t need to do this, Winzik,” Cuna said. “The matter is well in hand.”
“But security is not your duty, Cuna! It’s mine! Come, Brade. Let us get off this street and stop making a spectacle. Please, inside. Please?” As before, the Krell gestured in sweeping movements of their arms. Their voice, translated for me, had a feminine tone to it—but I wasn’t certain how much I could read into that.
“I can speak for the emissary,” Cuna said.
“I must insist,” the Krell said. “Very, very sorry! But it is protocol, you see! Inside we go.”
Scud. The other Krell I’d met on the streets—the ones who had acted so overly pleasing—seemed like pale charlatans compared to this creature. The very way this one moved and spoke, so flowery and with an air of false kindness, was just about the most offensive thing I could imagine.
I didn’t trust Cuna for one second. I knew they were trying to manipulate me. But this creature…this creature made my skin crawl.
Still, I stepped back into the building. Cuna stood by the door, impassive as Winzik entered. The human woman finally joined us. She was taller than me by a few centimeters, and muscled, with a certain power to each of her steps. She had a lean face that felt a little too…severe for her age, and she wore her hair in a buzz cut.
“Brade, test her,” Winzik said.
I felt a pressure against my mind. I gasped, my eyes widening, and somehow pushed back.
“Cytonic,” the woman—Brade—said in the Superiority language. “Strong.”
“It is in the documentation,” Cuna began. “Her people travel using primitive cytonics. But they aren’t advanced enough in their studies to be a danger.”
“She is still unlicensed,” Winzik said. “Your department shouldn’t ignore that fact.”
“She—”
“She is right here,” I interrupted, growing annoyed with all of this. “What you want to say, you can say to me directly.”
Both Cuna and Winzik looked at me with expressions I interpreted as surprise, Cuna pulling back, Winzik making a startled gesture with their hands. Brade, the human, just smiled in a sly way.
“My my, so aggressive,” Winzik said, clicking their hands together with a soft sound. “Emissary, do you know the danger you pose to us? To your own people? Do you know that by doing what you do, you could cause great destruction?”
“I have…some inkling,” I said carefully. “Cuna said that you want us to join the Superiority so that we would start using your hyperdrives, instead of relying on cytonics.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Winzik said, gesturing. “You are a danger to the entire galaxy. We can help. If your people join the Superiority.”
“And if we don’t?” I said. “Will you attack us?”
“Attack?” Winzik made a sweeping gesture. “I had thought you near primary intelligence. Such aggression! My, my. If you refuse to join us, we might have to take measures to isolate your species. We have cytonic inhibitors to stop you from leaving your home planet, but we wouldn’t attack you.”
Winzik drew their hand to their chest in a gesture that, while unfamiliar to me, still managed to convey their utter horror at the concept. So, they were like Cuna. Outwardly insistent on peace. I knew the truth.
“Winzik,” Cuna noted, “is head of the Department of Protective Services. He has a great deal of experience with isolating dangerous species.”
Head of…head of the group that kept my kind imprisoned. In a strange, surreal moment, I realized I was talking to the general of the Krell forces. Winzik didn’t seem much like a warrior to me, but I wouldn’t let mannerisms fool me.
This was the person who, ultimately, was responsible for the way we’d been treated. And for the death of my father. But why would such an important person be here, dealing with something as minor as Alanik’s supposed breach of protocol?
I glanced from Cuna to Winzik, and wondered if this was all an elaborate charade for my benefit. Cuna showed up, acted nice, and offered me a deal. Winzik arrived with sirens and threats, doing the same. They really wanted to control cytonics. And no wonder; people who could hyperjump threatened the Superiority’s travel monopoly. Were my powers truly even dangerous, or was that all a sham?
I remembered the terrible image of the delver destroying the humans of Detritus. No. The danger was no sham. But it certainly seemed that the Superiority had played off these fears and used them to establish control over the galaxy.
The human woman, Brade, was watching me. While the other two made gestures and noises to indicate they weren’t being aggressive, she stood with a relaxed air. Her place here was obvious. She was the weapon. If I couldn’t be controlled…she’d stop me.
“I need you to promise,” Winzik said, pulling a datapad from the bag at his side—Cuna had used a male pronoun to refer to him. “No, vow! My my, it must be forceful. You will not attempt hyperjumps near Starsight. You must follow the regulations on cytonics—no mental attacks, or even prods, upon the minds of people here. No attempts to circumvent the shields preventing cytonic jumps in the region. Absolutely no mindblades, though I doubt you are practiced enough for that.”
“And if I disagree?” I said.
“You’ll be ejected,” Brade said. “Immediately.” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Brade,” Winzik said. “No need to be so forceful! Emissary, surely you can see the need for us to be careful in this matter. Simply give me your word, and we shall take that as enough! Cuna is vouching for you, after all.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll follow your rules.” Though hopefully I would be back to Detritus with a stolen hyperdrive before too long.
“See, Cuna?” Winzik said, marking something on his datapad. “All you needed to do was bring a proper official with you! Now it’s all done right. My, my.”
Winzik retreated, his human guard trailing along behind him. I watched them go with a frown, confused at the strange interaction.
“I am sorry for that,” Cuna said. “Particularly the human. The Department of Protective Services apparently felt the need to send you an explicit message.” Cuna hesitated. “Though perhaps this is for the best. It would be good for you to have an ally here, among so many strange and new experiences, wouldn’t you say?”
C
una smiled again, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Anyway,” Cuna said. “I have assigned you requisition privileges so you can stock this location for your needs. Consider it to be an embassy of sorts—a sanctuary for your kind on Starsight, once we successfully build a new future together. If you wish to communicate with me, send a message to the Department of Species Integration, and I will see to it you receive a quick response.”
With that, they excused themself and walked down onto the street, where the crowd had gone back to its ever-flowing stream.
Feeling worn out, I sat down on the steps to the building and watched the people pass. An endless array of creatures, with seemingly infinite variety.
“M-Bot?” I asked.
“Here,” he said in my ear.
“Could you make any sense of all that?”
“I feel like we stumbled into a contest of power,” M-Bot said, “and they’re using you as a piece in their game. That Winzik is an important official, as important as Cuna. It seems remarkable that either of them would come in person to deal with such a seemingly insignificant race’s visit.”
“Yeah,” I said, then looked up from the crowds of people toward the black sky. Somewhere out there was Detritus, square in the sights of Superiority battleships.
“Come pick me up,” M-Bot suggested. “I’ll feel safer away from this public launchpad. There should be some kind of wire or connection at the building that will let me access the station’s public datanet. We can begin looking for information there.”
“My scan is complete,” M-Bot said. “I have deactivated the surveillance devices I found inside the building, and I’m pretty sure I found them all.”
“How many were there?” I asked as I poked around the top floor of the embassy building myself, turning on lights and looking through cabinets as I did.
“Two per room,” M-Bot said. “One obvious one hooked up to the network. They would likely feign surprise if you complained that you’d found it, claiming it was just part of the automation of the embassy. Then each room had a second on a separate line, hidden carefully near a power outlet.”
“They’ll find it suspicious that we disconnected those.”
“They might find it surprising that we found them, but in my experience—which is, granted, full of holes and half memories—this is the sort of thing that we’re supposed to politely ignore they did, while they’ll politely ignore our interference in their plans.”
I grunted, entering what was obviously a kitchen. Many of the drawers and things were labeled. Turned out I could hold my translator pin toward text, and it would read out for me what the words said. One faucet was labeled water, another was labeled ammonia, and a third saline. It seemed this place was set up to accommodate a variety of different species.
M-Bot had been right about the private launchpad on the embassy’s roof. Once I’d landed him, I’d plugged him into the datanet, and I’d started looking over the building from the top down. I had left Doomslug in the cockpit for now.
“I’m taking a general imprint of the datanet,” M-Bot continued, “which will hopefully let us mask which information we’re searching for, in case they’re monitoring our requests. There’s a surprising amount on here. The Superiority seems very free with information—though huge holes do exist. There is nothing about cytonics, and there are government warnings shutting down any discussion of hyperdrive technology.”
“It’s how they control their empire,” I said, “by deciding who gets to move where, and who gets to trade. I suspect that if a species falls out of favor, their taxes for travel suddenly go up—or they suddenly find that transports are visiting their world far less often.”
“You’re quite astute with the economics of that,” M-Bot noted.
I shrugged. “It’s not so different from what the caverns did to my mother and me, preventing us from joining normal society by forbidding us to hold real jobs.”
“Curious. Well, you seem to be right about how they maintain power. I also found an interesting tidbit about their technology level, specifically regarding holograms. The Superiority seems to be about equivalent to your people in that area—and nothing I’ve been able to find indicates they have access to stealth and holographic technology equal to mine.”
“So…,” I said. “No small hologram projectors like in my bracelet?”
“No. From what I can determine, they won’t even know to watch for what you’re doing. As far as they know, that technology doesn’t even exist.”
“Huh. Then where did you get it?”
“I have no idea. They hate AIs though. So maybe…maybe I was created to be able to hide. Not just from the Superiority, but from everyone.”
I found that strange, even a little disturbing. I’d assumed that once we escaped Detritus, we’d find that everyone had ships like M-Bot.
“Anyway,” he continued, “do you want to get a rundown of what I found about the Superiority?”
“I suppose,” I said.
“There are five main species leading the government,” he said. “Three you’re unlikely to encounter—there are very few in residence on Starsight. So we’ll leave out the cambric, the tenasi, and the heklo for now. Most relevant to you are the varvax, which you insist on continuing to call the Krell. They are the crustacean creatures with the exoskeletons. The other species is the diones. They’re the species that Cuna belongs to.”
“Some are crimson, others blue,” I said. “Is that like humans, with our skin tones?”
“Not exactly,” M-Bot said. “It’s kind of like a gender distinction.”
“The blues are boys, the reds girls?”
“No, their biology is very different from yours. They have neither sex nor gender until they breed for the first time, whereupon they form a kind of cocoon with another individual. It’s really quite fascinating; as part of the breeding process, they merge for a time into a separate third individual. Regardless, after breeding, they become red or blue, depending. They can initiate a change in other ways, if they wish to be considered unavailable for some reason—while the dark purple color is the skin tone of one who has not mated, or who has broken their pair bond and is seeking another mate.”
“That sounds convenient,” I said. “A little less awkward than the way we do it.”
“I’m certain, being organic beings, they’ve made it far more complicated than I just explained,” M-Bot said. “You do always seem to find ways to make relationships awkward and embarrassing.”
I thought about Jorgen, who must be worried about me, even if he had told me to go. What about Kimmalyn? Cobb? My mother and Gran-Gran?
Focus on the mission, I thought. Steal a hyperdrive. Come flying home with salvation in tow, to the praise of my allies and the weeping of my enemies.
It was harder to think with such bravado now that I was here, alone, way out of my depth. I suddenly felt isolated. Lost, like I’d strayed into the wrong branch of a cavern while exploring, then run out of light. A scared little girl who didn’t know where she was or how to get home.
To distract myself, I continued my search of the embassy. My own paranoia made me check each room just in case—and the next one I looked into was a bathroom that had a variety of interesting tubes and suction devices to accommodate different anatomies. There was something impressive and disgusting about it all at once.
I left the bathroom and passed back through the kitchen. There were plates and utensils here, but no food. I’d need rations to plan properly.
“Cuna mentioned requisition rights,” I said. “Can we get some supplies delivered?”
“Sure,” M-Bot said. “I’ve found a page with nutritional and dietary explanations. I should be able to find something that won’t kill you, but which someone of Alanik’s race would order, as to not arouse suspicions. Say…some mushrooms?”
“Ha. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten that whole mushroom thing.”
“Once I reprogrammed myself to make you my official pilot, that subroutine stopped running so often. I think my mushroom cataloging impulse must be related to my old pilot’s last orders, though I cannot fathom why. Anyway, shall I get you some food?”
“Enough for a day or so,” I said. “I hope to steal a hyperdrive quickly.”
“Wouldn’t it be wiser to stock up, so that you at least appear to be settling in for the long term?”
Scud. He was obviously way better at thinking like a spy than I was. “Smart,” I said. “Do that instead.”
I climbed down the steps to the second of the three floors of the building. The rooms here all appeared to be sleeping quarters that had hastily been set up with beds of the type Alanik’s species used. Cushioned with a bed frame that was shaped kind of like a nest, pillows all around the outside. I found one room with large tubs and a closet that had all kinds of ropes and other equipment, which I assumed could be affixed to the ceiling hooks if rooms needed to be transformed to accommodate some form of arboreal species. I’d seen several of those on the streets.
“Food ordered,” M-Bot said. “I got the ingredients raw, as I figure you’d rather make it yourself than trust what you’re being given.”
“You know me too well.”
“I’m programmed to notice behavior,” M-Bot said. “And speaking of that…Spensa, I’m worried about some aspects of this plan. We don’t know what the test to become a Superiority pilot will entail—there are very few details in the information Cuna left.”
“I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow. Passing a flight test is, I think, the least of our problems. At least that I can do without needing to fake my way through it.”
“A valid point. But sooner or later, Alanik’s people are going to grow concerned about the fact that she’s not reporting back to them. They might contact the Superiority and ask what happened to her.”
Great. As if I needed more stress about this mission. “Do you think we could find a way to send a message to Detritus?” I asked. “We could relay my status to Cobb and have him ask Alanik—if she wakes up—to contact her people for us?”
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