2.11.

Diego spoke with Sarah’s care team for some time before requesting an update on Eolai prior to the confrontation. Diego was informed that the surgery was going well; the nanites in Eolai’s body were taking to the rejuvenation procedure well, allowing them to finally heal some of the less critical wounds that he had suffered in the battle with his father.

The cloning of his replacement arm was also going well, with the procedure expecting to be finished within an hour. After that would be the surgical attachment of the limb, which was relatively routine. The most difficult aspect of the procedure would be growing the nerve connections which would allow Eolai to control the replacement limb; despite Yonohoan medical technology, that would be a slow and painful process.

The sun was up before Diego was finally escorted to a comfortable outdoor waiting area near a stream. Sarah was nearby looking at the water, her toes in the spring, when she noticed him. She exclaimed in joy and ran over to meet him, attempting to embrace him.

He calmly and firmly caught her and kept her from becoming too intimate with him.

“You’re real,” she exclaimed. “I knew you’d come. I was worried that it would just be another hologram, though.”

“Yeah, I’m here,” he agreed. “Sarah, we need to talk.”

She eagerly agreed. She grew less enthused as the talk progressed. When the words “I don’t love you, and I’m sorry but I’m afraid I never will,” were said, she began crying. She held it together long enough for them to go through the differences between her reality and Diego’s.

How he had been impacted by her unwanted romantic and sexual advances. How he had noticed her slipping into her delusions and attempted to get her help. How he saw her as a crewmate and a friend, but nothing more. How her psychiatric condition and fixation on him meant that she could never truly consent to a sexual relationship with him.

She listened through the tears, refusing to allow the emotions welling within her to win and rob her of her dignity.

They did not hug when they parted. They did not even shake hands. Diego reached out for her, but she flinched, and he nodded.

“Be well, Sarah,” He said in parting. “I hope that you recover. I think it’s best if we don’t see too much of each other from now on, but I really hope that you can overcome your current struggles and find happiness.”

In the end, she sat by the little stream, watching the tadpole like fish analogues nibble at her toes, and she wept, watched over by unseen watchers who were ready to intervene should she require it. The tears were tears of healing, the heartbreak she felt was the breaking of a poorly mended bone prior to the bone being reset.

~~~~~~

“So in conclusion, the aliens deny having knowledge about who or what it is that we shot down in Washington State,” Mary reported. “They identify it as a common model of a personal shuttle which a citizen of their society can purchase through the open market. Apparently it’s no more difficult than obtaining a muscle car for them. They insist that their official government had no knowledge or involvement and that there will be no official retribution for shooting whoever it was down. The senatorial aide who returned with Project Seeker specifically said ‘We Yonohoans understand the Earthling concept of ‘fuck around and find out.’ We respect your actions to defend your airspace and would have done the same in your position.’ They do acknowledge that their society isn’t perfectly monolithic, and that organizations outside of their official channels might have had a hand in the incident.

“I have also, as requested, questioned them upon the device that appeared in the Lagrange point several weeks ago. They have confirmed that one of the languages that the jamming device was broadcasting on was High-Yonohoan. They have stated that they do not speak the high-form of the language. Apparently it’s like Latin, they preserve it but do not use it except for official purposes.

“I will now read the translation that they provided. ‘We have fulfilled our side throughout the eons. The Last Son of Eodar has set in motion events which cannot be accurately predicted. Events which may bring about the great darkness, or which may bring light and connection to the universe. The weapon which seeks enemy and finds allies is loose once more in its most unpredictable form. Earth must be preserved at all costs.’ The message then repeats the english message, more or less. They say that there are some nuances to the Yonohoan version of the message which do not translate well.”

She concluded her report, and the men and women of the council exchanged looks. “How go the efforts of reclaiming the wreckage in Washington?” one man asked finally.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“It’s still on fire. We’re lucky that it’s not radioactive, but it’s burning too hot to approach,” came the answer. “The forest fire that was set by the crash is mostly under control, but the vessel itself appears to be self-combusting. No attempts to extinguish it with standard materials have been successful.”

“At least we know that we can defend ourselves against them,” an older general commented. “The fact that it was outclassed by our aircraft once it hit the atmosphere should bring us all some sort of comfort.”

Mary held her tongue. She wasn’t entirely certain what had happened when the spacecraft had engaged in the dogfight, but she had a sense that something wasn’t as it appeared.

“So, either a rogue element of the Yonohoan government is responsible, or it’s one of the many unknown factions of the intergalactic networks that they claim exist,” someone said. “Do we have any idea what their motivation was?”

“Surveillance, I would assume,” another aide said.

Mary shook her head. “If it was simply surveillance, then they would have fled when their stealth craft was detected in the asteroid belt,” she argued. She looked around the table at the old men and women with bars on their shoulders to match or exceed her own. “I think it was an infiltration gone wrong. We couldn’t track them once they went FTL, it was only when they hit the atmosphere that they reappeared on radar. According to the Yonohoans, humanoid is the most common shape and form of aliens in the universe, and if their own appearance is anything to indicate the norm, it would be very easy for one of the other humanoid races to infiltrate our society.”

“If it was a black ops mission from the Yonohoans, how do we respond?” one of the younger men questioned. “After all, if they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, of course they would deny it.”

“First we have to prove it, and we don’t have the evidence to do that,” Mary stated. “At least if we were going to take an official stance on the matter.”

“They are presently the only ones who know where we are,” the speaker pointed out.

“They’re the only ones that we’ve intentionally disclosed our location to,” Mary clarified. “There’s a difference. The unknown military agent who stopped the Keeper to question Captain Moon and her staff could have utilized the intelligence that he or she or they acquired from the stop in order to triangulate our position as well.”

“The agent who boarded the Toormonda ship, which I point out again was a gift from the Yonohoans and that the unknown agent possessed override codes for, spoke their language,” the man insisted.

“No, the agent spoke a dead language that the modern language was derived from,” Mary argued. “It would be like a traffic cop pulling you over and speaking middle-english. It makes no sense to anyone.”

The debate shuffled around for a while as various opinions were put forth and either shot down, tabled, or discussed. The simple fact was that nobody knew exactly what had happened, and that was damn troublesome.

“How the hell are we going to secure our world if we can’t even tel where someone is coming into the solar system from?” someone objected.

“The Yonohoans have offered to build us defense stations which they say will help us scan the traffic in and around the local star cluster,” Mary volunteered. “They’re not willing to provide us with ‘advanced’ weaponry yet, but scanner technology is definitely on the table.”

“Which is just great, because I’m certain that there will be no backdoor into these scanner stations which will allow them to keep a thumb on us,” the same man said snidely. “We need to develop our own countermeasures and not rely entirely on the aliens.”

“I agree. The problem is that until we figure out how all of the alien tech works, we have no way of countering it,” Mary pointed out. “My recommendation is that we accept the gifts that the Yonohoans are offering and use them to reverse-engineer the effects and/or find our own countermeasures to them.”

“Our missiles seem to have a proven track record,” the man pointed out. “Two for two by my count.”

The debate continued into the small hours of the morning. Mary sighed. Nobody was trusting the hand that the Yonohoans were extending in friendship, and she couldn’t blame them. The incidents of alien forces invading Sol space may or may not have been factions within their government or non-government agencies, but it wasn’t like the official representation of Earth was above sending in a black-ops team to gather intelligence or complete objectives in their rival and peer nations.

There was no simple solution to the situation. In the end, Mary was assigned to continue negotiations with the Yonohoans aboard the Seeker under the presumption of their government’s innocence until such time as evidence was presented to the contrary.

Exhausted, she slept for three hours after the meeting broke up, and then resumed her long-distance calls with Tilandrous and Etalia.

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