Ellis and Jack, unlikely co-crew of the survey ship Walküre, ended last chapter looking at an unfamiliar planet. Now they come to terms with their new environs, make a new friend, forge a new plan — and learn a new word, which implies a lot more than they could really guess.

Well past the halfway point of this story now. No smut in this one... not really, anyway. But a bit of a revelation because I'm the author and I get to do things like that. Enjoy! Two chapters left :D

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

"The green hills," by Rob Baird

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I had no idea what a Cosmodromo Federal was, but the first word sounded a lot like "spaceport" to me and I thought we were probably in more or less the right spot. I inched Walküre downwards until I could just feel the landing struts nudging the ground, and then cut power to the engines so that she settled down on her gear heavily.

"We can take off again, right?" Jack asked.

I turned to the jaguar and blinked, flattening out my ears. "Oh, shit. I hadn't thought about that."

Jack rolled her eyes. "Smartass."

Guilty as charged. But not so forgetful that I wouldn't make sure we had plenty of delta-v budget to make orbit again if we had to — not that it would matter much if we didn't find a source of jumpdrive fuel on the planet. And, you know, a map.

Initial scans of the place suggested it was pretty congenial, so far as we were concerned. Mid twenties, one gravity's worth of acceleration, and a breathable atmosphere. Nothing particularly disturbing was coming up on the pathogen detectors — that's always what you worry about first, when landing on a new planet, that you'll pick up some virus that'll melt your brain or something.

Naw. It looked like a peaceful, quiet, amicable place. It was just that there was nobody home, and that was a little bit confusing. Jack became increasingly restless, the longer it took for the scans to complete, and when a few hours had passed with nothing to threaten us I gave up my own nervousness and went down to lower the boarding ramp. It had settled just off the metal apron, into grassy dirt.

I took the first few steps carefully, until I could feel the gentle puffs of a warm breeze curling through my fur. It seemed so peaceful that there wasn't much of a point in tarrying; a few hops later and my booted feet met soft earth for the first time in quite a few years.

Someone had come out to greet us, I saw. It looked rather like a wolf, except that it walked on four legs. Curious eyes swept over me — and Jack, who had followed close behind on the ramp. She leaned over to take a closer look.

"Hello, there..."

The quadruped didn't answer; when I took a step forward, it cantered back, keeping its distance. "I don't think it understands us," I said. Then, to the creature, I raised my voice. "Go on — get!" This caused it to retreat a few paces, and it stayed in place as we wandered further from the ship.

At first I'd kept my hand on the holster of my sidearm — an older laser pistol without much punch, but good enough for a warning shot or to remind the unwary that I was armed. The longer we spent, though, the more I decided that I didn't need it.

As was her wont, the jaguar was less reserved. "It's beautiful," she sighed. Then she spun around, and took a kittenish leap into the air that ended with her sprawling in the grass, her tail twitching happily. "Ellis! Isn't it beautiful?"

"It's pretty nice," I agreed, though in truth it had the same problems all planets did — it was too open, for one, and smelled of too many mysterious things. Like the wolfish quadruped, for example, who was eyeing the prone jaguar with more or less the same skepticism as me. "Come on, spots, get up."

She did, brushing down her skirt, seemingly oblivious to the grass stains on it. "You should take a moment to enjoy this, you know," she said, skipping up to join me as I made my way over the apron towards one of the big hangar-like buildings at its periphery. "We're not dead."

"Nope."

"Worth something, right?"

"Yup." 'Not dead' don't mean quite as much if you're still stranded on a planet that a highly advanced species saw fit to leave behind. I glanced up towards the huge pyramidal control tower, and then shook my head. "Don't you wonder what happened here?"

"Whatever it was doesn't seem to have been too destructive. Like they all just... left. No rioting."

"Maybe." The hangar door had a control panel next to it of the same type as I'd seen on the Valiant. This one was guarded by a huge spider, but when I brushed it away and opened the panel up I was a little reassured by a faint glowing light behind the buttons. "They did build their tech to last."

"This green button here, you think?"

"The one that says 'open'?" I pushed it, and we heard the clunk of a solenoid releasing. The door itself didn't budge, so I pushed the button a few more times. Closer inspection revealed that the hinges had frozen; I kicked it as hard as I could, and it opened a few centimeters, with a hideous screeching noise.

Once we were inside, though, everything looked pristine. The windows had long since gone opaque with age, but some sort of motion sensor brought up lights mounted in the ceiling, at least as bright as the sun outside.

It looked like a museum. Four vessels — starships, unmistakably — were parked neatly, with maintenance equipment and bowsers still left intact around them. I caught motion from the corner of my eye, and turned to see a small machine gliding over the wall, leaving a glistening trail of water behind it.

Cleaning robots. If they were still operational, then it stood to reason that the place hadn't been abandoned for as long as I thought — or the power generators were fantastically advanced.

The ships definitely supported this latter line of reasoning. They were all sleek, shiny and aerodynamic, with avian curves. The closest one was perhaps the size of my own Walküre, but where my ship was dominated by her fuel tanks and engines, this one's engines were placed in nacelles at the end of arching wings. I ain't much for art, but it was gorgeous.

"Do you think they still work?" Jack's eyes were wide, and her voice had a reverential hush to it.

"I dunno." There was only one way to find out; we picked our way around the crates of tools and machines that surrounded it, and found that the hatchway to the ship was already open. Four stairs led up into a darkened interior. I unbuttoned my holster and kept my paw on the grip of the pistol as I climbed them. The ship had a familiarly antiseptic odor.

Lights came on brightly, and I growled in surprise — a growl cut off curtly by a sharp male voice. "State your identity."

Though I glanced around frantically, I couldn't find a source for the voice. "Ellis. Ellis Bjørnestad." A softly glowing green orb drifted from around the corridor. I froze, and with my free paw motioned Jack to stay outside. "Get ready to run..." I muttered to her.

The formless green ball froze at eye level, and then a beam of light lanced forth, momentarily blinding me. "Your scans aren't recognized," the voice said.

"I've never been here before... I don't even know where here is."

"I can't get a downlink from the time servers. Please wait while I restart the system." The orb, and all of the lights, winked out.

"Ellis?" Jack sounded more curious than worried — but then, she was outside the ship, and I was not. "What's going on?"

"I don't know. It's still active. I don't trust these damned automated systems..." And really, why would I after my last encounter with terran technology?

But before I could decide to leave, the power came back on and the green ball reappeared. "A provisional search of the database indicates that you are not the registered owner of this vessel."

"That's correct..." I still didn't know to whom I was speaking.

"However, analysis also indicates that the registered captain last logged in two thousand, seven hundred fifty-three years ago, and is unlikely to do so again. Will you submit to a DNA scan?"

"I'm not... certain about..."

The thing's color shifted to a cautionary red. "Regulation 54 requires me to inform you that if you do not comply, you may face penalties up to and including termination."

I blinked. "Uh. I don't have much choice, then, do I?"

"Please hold out your hand."

I did so, and the glowing thing settled closer to my paw. I felt a sharp prick, and when I jerked my arm back a drop of blood had appeared at the tip of my finger. "The fuck was that for?" Silence. The orb hung in place exactly where it had stopped. "Hello?"

The thing came back to life, and its color became green again. "Gold protocols are now in effect. Captain Ellis Bjørnestad, welcome aboard the survey ship Aegis Olympic. I am the ship's integrated artificial intelligence — you may refer to me as 'Aegis,' or choose a different name in the ship's settings. You are now registered as the commander of this vessel."

It was such an abrupt change that I couldn't quite make sense of it. "What? Did you just give me control of this ship?"

"Affirmative, Captain Bjørnestad," the orb — who was really 'Aegis,' who was really the ship, I guess — said. "Gold protocols direct that I inform you we must depart at your earliest convenience."

"Why?"

"Your life may be in dan — state your identity."

At first I wondered if it might've encountered a software glitch, but a glance behind me showed that Jack had decided to come aboard in spite of my warning. "Jack Palomo. Who are you?"

"This is Aegis, voice of the ship. Aegis, Jack is my first mate. What's this about our lives being in danger? This planet doesn't look like it's been occupied for... centuries."

"Twenty-seven centuries, to be precise. That's when the evacuation order was carried out. However, it seems reasonable to expect that your presence here has been detected. I'm beginning preflight sequences, Captain Bjørnestad." I could hear systems activating — the electronic chirping of awoken computers, and the hiss of life support regulators, and the familiar, heavy thrumming of a jumpdrive. "How did you get here?"

I made my way slowly forward. The cockpit of the Aegis Olympic was dominated not by video screens but by large panes of glass through which one had a beautiful view of the outside world. The control panels were elegant and mostly switchless. "A survey ship of my own, the Walküre — you can see it through the hangar doors." Which, presumably on some order from Aegis, were opening.

"If your ship is detected, it could cause a reincursion. Do you have a functional cloaking device?"

"No." I knew of such things, but they were fantastically expensive and completely useless for a survey and salvage pilot like myself. "Incursion of what?"

"The same thing that caused us to leave this planet in the first place. This is Earth, Captain Bjørnestad. It is the birthplace of our species, and your genetic legacy as well. Your ship is an existential threat. I'm afraid it must be hidden or eliminated before we leave. In the equipment room, please find one of the small black disks labeled 'SASA' and affix it to the side of your vessel."

"I'm not going to sabotage my ship on the orders of a computer I just met. I mean —"

"Time is of the essence, captain. Either we escape, or we perish, irrespective of your desires."

"Do we have time to get our stuff?" Jack wanted to know.

"It will take ten minutes for the jumpdrive to finish integrity checks and come to full power. You have until then."

The jaguar and I exchanged glances. She was quicker at coming to terms with things like this than I. "And you won't, like, shoot at us — will you?"

"I cannot harm you, or through inaction allow you to come to harm. But please do not tarry."

I didn't have much stuff — most of it was on the computer — but as I climbed back into the Walküre I felt unsettled nonetheless. Our own startup sequence would only take a few minutes, and then we could be climbing back and out of the atmosphere. I explained this to Jack quickly. "Probably couldn't hit us 'fore then..."

"And then what?"

"Eh?"

Jack was stuffing things back into her bag. "Still don't have any fuel, right? So we're still stuck. This ship may have a way out. It seems to have a working jumpdrive, too. I think it'll listen to our commands..."

"This is all moving very fast for me."

"Don't you move at twenty kilometers a second all the time? C'mon, Ellis," Jack nudged me. "You got anything here?"

Everything of real value was digital; my mementos, for the most part, were in storage somewhere. I had enough of a sense of nostalgia that I didn't want dad's old memories to be lost forever just because his son fucked up a mission. I took my surveying kit, and the computer core, and everything of value from my locker.

Whiskey, trinkets, and electronic ghosts. That was all I had to show for my life. It wasn't much. As Aegis had instructed, I stuck the heavy black puck I'd found in the equipment room to the side of the Walküre, next to her hatchway. "Be back for ya, old girl," I muttered, patting the rough skin.

"Sentimental, huh?"

"Can it. Saved our asses, didn't she?"

As soon as we were back aboard the Aegis Olympic, the hatchway closed. I looked for a place to stow my gear and settled for the equipment bay, which looked solid enough that I didn't think anything would be too badly damaged if one of my bags struck it in zero-g.

All the lights were on and flashing in the cockpit when Jack and I made our way forward. "Are you ready to depart?" Aegis asked. Its voice was still a bit bossy.

"Reckon so." The pilot's chair had a more or less familiar manual steering setup, and I strapped myself in, closing my paws around the controls. "What was that thing I put on my ship, anyway?"

The Walküre was directly in front of us, blocking our exit. As I watched, though, the little black dot near her entryway started to spread, becoming a silvery coat of paint that seethed over the ship until it was formless — and shrinking. "Self-assembling, semi-automatic drones," Aegis said. "They're deconstructing the ship so it can't be found."

A minute later there was nothing left but a shimmering puddle on the ground, and then even this lost its luster. My muzzle hung open. "Can it be... re... constructed?"

"Probably. But we lack the time. Captain, please feel free to take us out at your leisure, although it would be helpful if your leisure could be expedited. The throttle is the control on the left. Translation is handled through a small — yes, that one." A glowing display popped up on the glass, showing our position relative to the ground.

It wasn't exactly like the system on the Walküre, which was — here I realized the need for the past tense — a bit more complicated. In this case a small pressure-sensitive four-way switch rested on the throttle. I touched it carefully, and the Aegis Olympic drifted up a meter or so. "Fore and aft translation, is that this little switch right next to it?"

"Correct, captain."

Well, at least my piloting skills weren't obsolete. We glided from the hangar deck, and I fired the translation controls again to lift us up and above the tallest part of the hangar. Whatever I could say about her AI, the ship itself handled beautifully — light and maneuverable, like something half her size. "Retract the landing gear."

"Already done, captain. Transorbital checklists are complete."

"Hang on, Jack." I saw her claws come out as she felt for the armrests of the chair. The main engines rumbled politely when I advanced the throttle fractionally, and the ship began to pick up speed handily. I pulled back on the stick, until we could see bright blue sky above us, and slowly added on power.

There was no real sensation of speed, and no kick in the pants when we accelerated — but the clouds tore past us, and the sky darkened swiftly to deeper blue, and then familiar black. The numbers on the glass showed us at a hundred kilometers up. Then a hundred and fifty. Two hundred.

"You can stop. I'm charging the jumpdrive now," Aegis said. I backed off the throttle, to the idle point, and waited. A series of glowing hexagons appeared on the glass. "Please follow the indicated course and speed. The jumpdrive will activate automatically on synchronization."

As I turned Aegis Olympic onto her new course, I noticed something rather peculiar — we did not seem to be feeling the shock of acceleration at all. "Does this ship have artificial gravity?"

"Of course," it said. "Inertial dampeners should also remove most of the shock of acceleration and maneuvering. You're more than welcome to give its maneuverability a try — after we jump. Three kilometers per second, please."

I inched the throttle up, and shook my head. Brave new worlds, these. At least Jack was having fun; she had leaned forward in her chair, and her tail was waving briskly. Good old jaguars.

We had almost reached our target when there was a bright flash, and in the second before I felt the constriction in my chest and our jumpdrive kicked in I had the apparition of some massive construct appearing before us — vast, ugly, blocking out the stars. "What the —"

Then it disappeared, along with Earth, and all her constellations. We were in empty space.

"... fuck?" I finished weakly. "Jack, did you see something?"

"Yeah. It was another ship! I told you that place had to be inhabited!"

"It's not quite what you think," Aegis said calmly. "I'm beginning a scan of the target area. We have reached our destination with an accuracy of... point two AUs."

"What was that thing?"

"One of the adversary's motherships. I told you that we were pressed for time, captain. As expected, I'm detecting a large body of metal two hundred thousand kilometers off the starboard bow. Captain, I recommend we open hailing frequencies."

I had not the first clue how to accomplish this, of course. "Then... do so?"

"Frequencies open."

"This is captain Ellis Bjørnestad of the survey ship W... of the survey ship Aegis Olympic," I corrected, "to anyone who can read me. Please respond." Just like back on Earth, nobody answered — guess it's hard to keep the welcome mat open for three thousand years, though. "Aegis, can you show me this metal body?"

The glass rippled, and a dark image appeared in the center of the screen.

"Make it bigger?" Jack asked.

At suitable magnification it was clearly identifiable as a space station — huge, larger than Tartarus by far. It was also possible to see the black scoring along its skin, and the inside of the station, too, where it had been opened to space. The damage did not look particularly recent.

"I don't think anybody's going to pick up, Aegis," I said softly. "Those guys've got bigger problems..."

"It must've been discovered. I will refer to the gold protocol handbook for determining the appropriate course of action."

"Which is?"

"Unfortunately, security concerns prevent me from disclosing to you our contingency plans."

"But you can tell me what's happening?"

The adversary, explained Aegis, was a powerful interstellar empire. Earth's colonies had encountered them some time in the 44th century. The next two hundred years had seen defeat after defeat, and when they appeared on Terra's doorstep the inhabitants had fled, scattered to hidden space stations and asteroids separated by many long parsecs.

Aegis did not know who the adversary really was, nor where they came from, nor how many Earth dwellers might be left. "Perhaps none," it admitted — the evacuation, it said, had come thousands of years before. That was a long time for someone suitably dedicated to track down any remaining threats.

The AI told us that it would take a few hours to decide on the next course of action, and so Jack and I left to find something better to do. It was a well-furnished ship, although I found it a little strange to be able to walk normally through its corridors.

We found a cabin, with a relatively nice bed, and I took a seat on the edge of it, looking at the smooth walls. "Hell of a day," I grunted.

Jack nodded, and sat next to me. "You do have an exciting life."

"You would've wanted to stay on the planet awhile, huh?"

She nodded again. "I really liked it. It was gorgeous..." she sighed. "Wish I could see it again." On command, the coloring of the walls changed — everything vanished but a vista of the terran jungle as seen from, I suppose, somewhere up in the control tower of COSMODROMO FEDERAL QUINTANA ROO. Jack giggled. "Not bad."

It wasn't, really, I guess. The images cycled slowly — a huge red and tan canyon, a massive waterfall, and rolling green slopes that I guess could beckon to anyone suitably hungry for natural gravity and atmosphere.

I was thinking more about my ship, and how I was going to explain what had happened to Nichi, or to Natsuki Tanba, or to anyone, really. My plans for a quick buck had been summarily undermined. Now I was caught up in... well, I didn't know, exactly. A millennia-old war.

Folks who believe in Earth have lots of different reasons why they assume we left it. Pollution or an environmental catastrophe tend to be the biggest ones. Religious or political differences come next. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything about a war, and certainly nothing about us being on the edge of extermination.

On the other hand, by the Caledonian calendar it was also only five hundred and thirty years since 'year zero,' and if Aegis was to be believed that meant the Valiant had been floating around dead in space for more than two millennia before anybody even got the idea to leave Caledonia in the first place. So there was a rather lengthy gap of time I had no real explanation for.

But suppose it was all true? Suppose I had just set foot on my ancestral home — maybe the only living man in the entire universe to have done so. I took a deep breath. This survey trip had gone awfully cerebral. "What does Australia look like?" I heard myself asking.

The view changed again. Scrubland — red desert, and patchy grasses, and an imposing rock face stretching up and before us to a darkening sky. It wasn't all that bad, to be honest. I leaned back on the bed, and as I watched the stars began to come out, one by one.

"It's gorgeous. This where you're from?" Jack reclined with me, and I felt her head resting on my side.

The image was so faithful that in the artificial gravity I could almost feel the warm breeze in my fur. "That's what they say. My birth certificate says my folks were both Australian koolies. It's pretty common on the continent where I'm from. They said Australia was a place on Earth but I always just figured it was... a myth? I dunno? Just somebody's name or something, and they made up a place for it so it didn't seem like we were homeless."

"But we're not." A meteorite blazed across the night sky and Jack gasped softly. "Oh, I never thought I'd see one of those again..."

Even fictional, it struck a little pang for me, too. Sitting on a hill, near the quarry where my dad worked, and watching the stars — that was my only real memory of the time I'd spent with my mother. "They say you're from somewhere?"

"Jaguars? Nah. Jungles. Earth, of course. Everyone's from Earth..." She laughed, and stretched one of her arms over my chest to play with my vest distractedly. "But when we landed, I just... it felt right."

The planetbound and their landlubbing ways were no great novelty to me, and not particularly convincing, but I turned to look at her anyway. Something in her tone had caught my ear. "Yeah?"

Young as she was, and new to the promise and perils of space, she met my gaze and held it. "Yeah. I'm gonna go back some day." And the conviction with which she said it spoke of pretty stern stuff beneath those spots. "Those jungles, and those clouds." She smiled at me. "No... the cool, green hills — isn't that the line?"

"What line?"

"Some old song my mom used to sing."

I shrugged. "Not heard of it."

Jack's ear flicked, and she rolled onto her side. After a moment, when I turned to face her, she slipped her arm 'round me in a hug. "Sorry about your ship, Ellis."

"Nothin' lasts," I muttered, though the truth was I had been rather fond of the old crate, and part of me hoped Aegis wasn't lying when it said she could be rebuilt. I had reasons of my own to return, if that was the case. "Anyway we got out, and that's what counts."

She nodded, and snuggled up closer to me. The warm breeze I'd felt earlier, I discovered, was not an illusion — for at a quicker movement of it, I could see the jaguar's fur ripple. Clever environmental controls. "You know, um. Last time. I didn't mean to make it seem like I just slept with you to get a ride..."

"I knew what you meant. No hard feelings."

"None?" Her eyebrow arched, and a claw skimmed along my shirt teasingly.

"I said feelings," I clarified, and Jack grinned. She brought her muzzle forward, and I met the kiss with surprising gentleness, letting her drive. She deepened it swiftly, and her eyes closed. I felt the slightly rough touch of her tongue, seeking entrance, and I met it with my own as my hunger built, and smoldered.

She moaned at the touch of my paws as I felt down her sides, and hooked one of her muscular legs around my hips to pull me closer, grinding against the growing hardness constrained by my jeans. It was as good an excuse as any to find the edge of her skirt, pulling it up to reveal the backs of her thighs. I seized her rear as she gasped out again, pulling her against me firmly.

The pressure around my crotch released suddenly as her fingers undid the buttons of my jeans and I was just about to get rid of the things altogether when I heard a voice and froze. "Captain Bjørnestad?"

"What?" It came out as a flustered and not particularly dignified squawk.

"I wished to note for you that the ship's automated pharmacy is capable of dispensing prophylactics if you require them."

"Were you watching?" Jack hissed.

There was no glowing orb in the room, and to be truthful I don't really know what its function had ever been; Aegis seemed to be omnipresent. "It's my responsibility to track environmental functions so that I can properly assist the crew. In this case, when I detected that you were becoming amorous, I wanted to make sure that you were aware of the functions available to —"

"Stop!" I growled. "Fuck you and your 'becoming amorous.' Jesus, stop monitoring this room."

"Very well, captain. When you've finished your copulation, please note that I've planned and programmed your next jump. This room is no longer monitored."

Jack blinked blue eyes, and her ears swiveled back. "'Finished your copulation'? That makes it sound so..."

"Tawdry?"

She frowned. "A little."

The moment had been upset, and I was no longer feeling quite so needy. "Well, these encounters can't all end the same, right?" The jaguar grinned, and when I slid my arms back up to encircle her back she pressed up against me, cuddling into my chest with a contented purr.

"You want to go see what's up with the jump?" she finally asked.

"Not really," I grunted. It's hard work, being a captain. "But I guess we should."

Aegis didn't have anything apologetic to say when we made our way back to the bridge; the course steering indicators were already broadcast up on the cockpit glass. "Jumping in five... four... three... two... one... location established. We have entered approximately one hundred sixty thousand kilometers away from our planned destination. Beginning a scan of —"

But an alarm bell cut Aegis off before it could finish. "What's that?" I snapped.

"Targeting systems have illuminated us. Captain, we're being hailed."

I was not having very good luck with these Terran things. "Put it through!"

"Attention vessel inbound bearing zero eight zero declination negative three-five. Identify yourself immediately."

It was a very martial request, with a very authoritative sounding female voice. "Ah, this is captain Ellis Bjørnestad of the survey ship Aegis Olympic."

"Aegis Olympic, your ship is not in our records and from what I can tell your IFF is completely obsolete. I can't get a reading one way or the other. What the hell are you trying to pull?"

It was an excellent question, really, and of course I didn't have a very good answer. "Uh. To be honest, um, I don't know. I'm new to this ship, and to this part of space. I don't know where I am, or who you are, or —"

"Aegis Olympic, do not approach closer than one hundred thousand kilometers or we will open fire." Aegis helpfully brought up a map that showed our target, and I began to decelerate to avoid causing further offense. "This is Terran station Alexandria — Deep Space Torus 3. Access to this sector is highly restricted. Whoever told you to come here is in violation of about twenty different penal codes."

"I didn't mean to screw anything up. Look, uh, Alexandria — I'm as confused as you are." I checked our velocity vector to confirm that we were indeed slowing. "We're going to hold position as you requested — no need to shoot at us, that's becoming a theme I'd like to give up for a bit. Can we talk?"

"Activate your viewscreen."

"Aegis?"

The cockpit glass snapped into a view of what, I presumed, was the inside of the station — manned by what I would've considered grotesque aliens, had they not identified themselves as Terran. They looked something like monkeys, only with hardly any fur — the one who had been talking, I presume, had a proper mane, but most of the others did not and one was completely bald.

Fortunately the strange bipeds seemed as startled by me as I was by them, for I saw their leader blink in surprise. Her mouth opened — closed — opened again. "Lieutenant Malcolm! G-get the station-master!" she suddenly spluttered. "And activate gold protocols immediately."

This was the second person I'd heard mention 'gold protocols,' which meant absolutely nothing to me — but now amber lights were flashing in the background of their control center. The person she'd addressed was no less perplexed. "Commodore Farrell is asleep, ma'am."

"Then wake him! And bring that damned ship in! Aegis Olympic, you're cleared for high-priority docking, bay four, entry vector gamma two. Lieutenant Barabak, tell the USS Shenandoah to wave off; we'll find her another berth."

Lieutenant Malcolm was one of the odder looking ones, bald and lanky as a cheetah. "Sir, I don't —"

"Goddamnit — are you blind, lieutenant?" She pointed at us through the viewscreen, across thousands of kilometers of space. " They're moreaus."