Klandra and Shkarn shared a look as their tails twitched in suspicion. "What does it matter now? He's dead, as you well know."

"Because we need to know what he knew," Ali admitted. "I don't agree with his methods, but something was driving him, and he never told us."

"But you were his ally," Ben added.

Klandra hissed at him. "He was going to destroy my planet!"

Ali nodded sympathetically. "Yes, after you so kindly bust him out of prison too," she said. "There was a reason you did that, and it can't be as simple as an unpaid debt. Your people are not foolish enough to risk war without more details. Whatever he had was enough to convince you or your father that it was worth possibly restarting old wars."

Klandra's eyes darted between them for a moment as if she was trying to judge just what their intentions were. "Princess -" Shkarn started.

"No," Klandra interrupted. "We've been wanting allies and Captain Turner is responsible for destroying the weapon Bert planned on turning on Taurr."

Shkarn lowered his shoulders in a low bow that wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for the stooped stature natural to taurrans, submitting to her superiority. Klandra turned back to Ali and said, "besides, you're honest to a fault."

"I can't decide if that's a compliment or an insult," Ali admitted.

Klandra didn't feel the need to clarify. "We gave Bert resources because we were trying to stop a war."

Ali and Ben glanced at each other as if the other could solve their confusion. "You sponsored a terrorist to prevent a war?" Ben asked.

"My species have been on the receiving end of kentarian warfare for centuries, you cannot fight them conventionally."

Ben could feel a sense of unease from Ali, he glanced at her briefly before turning back to Klandra. "The kentarians don't exactly have a strong military presence," he said, getting the impression he was missing something. "Even during the height of their conflicts with the taurrans. Unless my history education was lacking."

"They don't need one," Ali explained quietly, and he started to realise the feeling he was getting from her wasn't unease, but guilt by association. "A kentarian interrogation can be done without physical violence of threat, and the result is more reliable and far, far more painful for the subject."

"They revelled in it," Klandra hissed.

Ben saw Ali nodding sadly. "I mentioned the cost of eeuvat before. During the height of the wars the military hierarchy pushed their squads to use their abilities until the first signs started to show. They said it was a sign they were ready for ground warfare because they'd unlocked their battle focus. In truth it was to send them to their death because they were no longer useful interrogators and it was the easiest way to hide them away. Such techniques really only became frowned upon as Kentar entered the wider society and economy of the sector. Who would trust a race who could so easily bend others to their will? Those skills were quickly hushed away and stigmatised, within a generation they were no longer considered acceptable."

Klandra laughed. "Oh, how little you know."

"Is that what Bert discovered? That Tuktutav were trying to resurrect those ways?" Ali snapped. "Because we've already found out about them."

"Bert discovered Antke."

~-x-~

"And you honestly think we can trust her?" Grey asked.

Ali took a breath as she considered the question. "Honestly? I don't know," she admitted. "But we aren't going to get to Antke without her."

"Why not?"

"We're digging into Kentar's sordid past, the stuff that got purged from the record so that they could brand themselves as one of the sectors more upstanding races," Ali explained with a shrug. "Never believe it, all species have skeletons hidden deep within dark closets."

Grey knew she had a point, but their new alliance still worried him. And not just because they were considering trusting someone whose ally he had personally killed when Barker threatened Ali with a gun. "Okay. What, exactly, is the deal?"

"Simple, she'll give us a set of coordinates to meet her at, and from there only a small group goes with her to Antke so that she feels secure that it's not an ambush."

"And do we get to pick who goes or is she issuing a guest list?" Grey asked sarcastically.

"Honestly, a guest list might be easier," Ali quipped. "Saves having to listen to our senior officers argue over who gets to go with."

Grey chuckled at that. "Pull the CO's prerogative card?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Ali tilted her head with a lopsided smile. "You try that."

~-x-~

Antke was a dry planet, not as arid as Kentar, but there wasn't an abundance of plant life as their small ground team surveyed their surroundings. The wind and dust had done a number on the buildings nearby, though they'd only been abandoned for a century or so they looked much older.

"Your people's choice in planets is terrible," Klandra drawled.

Ali chuckled. "I've lived on worse."

"I thought you were raised human?" Klandra asked.

"I was, but we moved planets a lot," Ali said with a shrug. "Scans suggest the buildings are sound enough for us to go in…"

"Hm, dangerous buildings or risk being sanded down by a dust storm?" Rila teased. "Hard call."

Ali rolled her eyes but otherwise let her second in command joke her way through the situation. Instead she directed their team to the nearest entryway into the structures. "So how did Bert come across this place?" She asked.

"You know, I never asked," Klandra admitted.

They had to force the door open, but that was made easier by the damage from the environment, and it also gave them a target: get the power back on. "We could split up," Rila suggested.

"Remind me to forward you some horror vids to explain why that is a terrible idea," Ben retorted.

Ali giggled at the idea of Ben being superstitious as the non-humans of the group shared various confused looks. "Maybe lets get a slightly better idea of what we're looking at first, we might not even need this building."

No one could argue with that as they carefully picked their way through the debris of abandoned and weathered building until they had some idea of what the building they were exploring had been used for. After a time they wrote it off as some kind of living space and started on the next one. That too was without power but with a more organised atrium and blood stains on one wall, instantly felt less like a living area. "Let me guess, those stains are too old to be useful?" Shkarn rasped sarcastically.

"Yep, all I've got is taurran and kentarian blood, degraded DNA so you ain't gonna get a hit from it, but enough to identify the species," Ali confirmed as she scanned it.

None of them pointed out that any one of the could as guessed as much, it was still useful to confirm it.

With a bit of physical encouragement - an improvised crowbar - they were able to force the door to the stairways open. "I wasn't expecting a map," Rila said as their torches flitted over a wall poster that looked like a list of levels and annotations.

"Okay, plant room is down a level and their labs are two floors up," Ali explained.

"So who wants the creepy basement?" Rila teased from where she was peering down the stairwell into the darkness.

"Are your crew always this glib?" Klandra asked.

"You sure you want me to answer that?" Ali retorted, and she considered that her answer. "Okay, Rila, Shkarn, see if you can get the power back on. We'll see what we can make of the labs."

Shkarn looked to Klandra to make sure she was happy with the suggestion. Klandra had no objections and so that was what they did. The building didn't get much better the further in they got. Everything was covered in dust and some of the windows had been broken by Antke's weather, though they were also the only source of light in the labs when they reached them.

"What are we looking for?" Ben asked.

"Right now, anything that might give us answers without power," Ali said with a shrug, slowly probing the darkness with her torch as she tried to get a sense of the room in front of them.

"How about an interrogation chair?" Klandra asked, causing both Ali and Ben to turn to the patch of darkness she was stood in, trying not to blind the taurran with their torches as they did.

"This looks like the one they strapped us into, only much older," Ben admitted once they'd joined the taurran.

"It's also covered in blood and other fluids…" Ali explained as she passed her scanner over it.

"Taurran?" Klandra asked, Ali nodded gravely and the taurran swore under her breath.

There was a silence as they all browsed the immediate area before Ben broke it. "Can you get anything else from it?" He asked, looking at Ali.

She shook her head. "No, it's all too old. Too degraded," she explained, though as she trailed off she chewed her lip in thought before glancing back around the room. "Unless…"

"Unless what?" Klandra asked, she had paused her own search to listen to their conversation.

"Kentarian military designed a kind of tech that codes information in a way only kentarian minds can comprehend. It's rare, illegal but for all the very strictest of top secret clearance - not that that stopped it finding it's way onto the black market, sans secrets." Ali wasn't looking at either of her companions as she poked the beam from her torch into all the nooks and crannies she could see. "This feels like the kind of thing they'd want restricting to kentarian only access."

"What are we looking for?" Ben asked.

"Something that can easily fit in a hand, or a console with a DNA pad," Ali explained. "Do not touch either."

"Are you saying your people managed to technologically harness your telepathic abilities?" Klandra asked, her voice a barely audible hiss betraying her fear.

"Kinda," Ali admitted. "It's entirely passive and really relies on a species own abilities rather than being able to actively probe a mind. It basically imparts information."

"That does not reassure me," Klandra admitted.

"Nor me," Ben admitted from where he was stood near another doorway. "You'll both want to see this," he added to call the both over.

Ali and Klandra shared a look but neither were any the wiser until they joined him. "A morgue?" Klandra hissed.

"Krekt," Ali swore as she followed Ben into the room, he was still brandishing his rifle as if he expected some kind of old phantom to ambush them at any point. She was relying more on her scanner and senses. "Just bones," she said once her scanner had finished churning the data. "I'm gonna regret this…" she muttered to herself as she grabbed a handle with both hands and pulled to open the compartment.

Ali didn't need her scanner to confirm the skeleton was taurran, nor Klandra's hiss of disapproval at what it meant. "How?"

"I don't know," Ali admitted. "We're centuries too late to have any definitive evidence, but I'm more concerned by these," she said whilst indicating to some deep gouges across the forearm and ribs.

"Telepathic torture wasn't enough but your people had to physically hurt them too?" Klandra demanded.

"I don't think it's that simple," Ali admitted quietly.

"What?"

Ali didn't say anything as she glanced between the bones and her scanner whilst miming movements around her own body as if she could unlock the secrets with all she had. Then she turned to the next compartment with remains in and yanked it open and repeated the examination. She quickly ran through the whole process on all the skeletons present. All without saying a word.

"Ali?" Ben asked when it became apparent she wasn't about to share her thoughts without prompting.

Her voice was barely more than a whisper as she said, "I think they were forced to do that to themselves."