Tihud stumbled as the blast from her energy pistol caught him square in the chest. Ali didn't hesitate to fire off a second shot when she saw the first didn't immediately floor him.

Got him!

Great! Now if you could take over the section of security guards he controlled… Ben half suggested as she heard another shot ring out over the assembly chamber.

Ali had to admit, he rather had a point there. What happened to the days when it was as simple as just shooting the bad guy? She scoffed to herself as she grabbed her scanner again, her life had never been that simple. Right now, as she half crawled half pulled herself into a better vantage point to join in the firefight, she was hoping Ben would let Nra Vikad know that Tihud had been subdued and somehow he would be able to rein in the assembly security personnel.

She was able to use her scanner to give her potential targets, and because she was unable to move particularly quickly with the injury on her leg, she was going to have to open herself up to attacks to see if they were going to shoot her once they saw her before pulling her own trigger. Though she was reassured that there seemed to be less shots going off.

So when her scanner indicated that there was a potential enemy around the corner of the desk she was alongside, she arranged herself in the best possible position to check. She quickly twisted both her head and gun carrying hand around to aim at the person there. They turned sharply to her, before raising a weapon and Ali shot before retreating back. She counted a few breaths before daring to look back, relieved to see the guard sprawled across the floor.

By the time she was barely halfway to another potential target the shooting had died down entirely, and Nra Vikad was tentatively calling out for the security personnel to lay down their weapons, even those who had been defending the assembly. Using the nearest desk as a crutch, Ali pulled herself up to take in the scene, ready to drop again if it was a trap. When she took in the scene, she sagged in exhausted gratitude to see people lowering their weapons, apart from the few people she knew were against Tihud, placing her own pistol on the surface as she hauled herself up so she could sit on the desk.

Ben and Nenanka approached, looking for Tihud, and Ali pointed them in the right direction. The pair of them manhandled his unconscious form towards the empty space near the overseer's dias, and Nenanka took some cuffs from a security guard to help prevent any unexpected escape attempt. Once most of the dissidents had been arrested Nra Vikad and Nenanka turned to survey what was left of the scene. "This will take a long time to clean up," Nenanka said, "but that won't stop the invasion that's coming."

"Then commit to properly investigating the issues raised, with outside oversight, and possible reparations or negotiations with the taurrans to show your sincerity to uncovering and eliminating this kind of practise," Ali said from her perch in the middle of the chamber.

Vikad and Nenanka turned to her as if they had forgotten she was still with them, Ben instead moved to help her make her way towards the centre of the chamber to more easily join the discussion. He knew that she'd never admit how bad her leg was, in fact he was surprised that she didn't even put up a token resistance to him slinging her arm over his shoulder as he helped her limp to a closer desk.

"The taurrans will not back down with such platitudes," Vikad corrected once she had properly joined them.

"Why not try? You'd prefer war, would you?" Ali challenged, wincing as she arranged herself into the least uncomfortable position and swatting Ben away when he tried to check on the injury she'd sustained.

"I prefer the solution where my people are not wiped out."

Ali rolled her eyes before she said, "that's exactly how the taurrans feel, and after seeing what happened to them on Antke, I can't say I blame them."

"Captain Turner has a point, Nra," Nenanka admitted. "If we can give them a reason to trust that we intend to seriously root out these practices and groups then maybe we can start to repair relations between our peoples."

Ali pulled her jacket sleeve back to give her access to the holographic display on her uniform top, tapping it on to check on her feeds. "Especially when you've got some explaining to do to The Forum as well. It doesn't look like the other members are particularly comfortable with the kentarians building up knowledge of how to dominate their minds."

"We might be signatories, but they have no jurisdiction over our military operations," Vikad replied tersely.

"So Pikaya and Tuktutav are clandestine military branches?" Nenanka asked, as if she had been hoping that part had been nothing but speculation. Not sects that cultivated illegal arts, but were sanctioned.

"Of course, our abilities are an advantage we shouldn't give up," Vikad dismissed her concerns with a firm horizontal hand gesture.

Ali and Ben shared a look as they realised that their attempts to convince Kentar's assembly had been doomed to fail from the start. Though Ali felt some kind of conflicted relief that Tihud had started a fight before she allowed Vikad access to her mind.

"Actually, Nra, yes we should," Nenanka said whilst simultaneously shooting at the overseer.

To say it was a surprise was an understatement and half of the security personnel turned sharply with their weapons raised. Ben did the same towards them, and Ali reached for her pistol only to realise she'd accidentally left it on the other desk.

"Stand down!" Nenanka ordered the whole room, raising her own gun to face the ceiling. "The entire assembly is under arrest until The Forum can send in investigators to help us clean up this mess," she added. "That will include myself once we've organised the terms and hopefully staved off a war."

"You're arresting yourself?" Ben asked, clearly distrustful.

"It's not my first choice, but right now I don't have one," Nenanka admitted. "My duty right now is to protect Kentar, everything else is secondary. Now, can you help me establish communications with both The Forum and Taurr to discuss terms of an investigation and ceasefire?"

"Gladly," Ali said.

~-x-~

"I must admit, when I told you I planned on telling my people what we discovered on Antke, I did not really expect you to prevent a war," Klandra admitted from the monitor on Ali's console.

Ali couldn't stop her wry chuckle at that. "If I'm honest, neither did I."

"Yet, you let me go anyway."

"I did," Ali agreed with a nod. "Just like a plucky assembly woman agreed to allow Taurr and The Forum to jointly investigate Pikaya and Tuktutav to establish just how much damage had been done and who to. There are kentarians who are as tired of the fighting as the taurrans."

"After Antke… that was getting harder to believe."

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Yeah," Ali agreed knowingly. "I know it will smack of political insincerity, but I hope that this is the start of better relations between Forum worlds and Taurr."

Klandra hissed a raspy cackle in amusement. "I don't think we're ready to think about joining."

"I wouldn't expect that to happen until we've built up a few decades - maybe centuries - of goodwill," Ali agreed. "But surely we can learn to be good neighbours?"

"We'll see," Klandra said with a slight incline of her head, a taurran sign of agreement, not as pronounced as human nod but similar.

Ali smiled. "Thank you, Klandra, for trusting us enough to take us to Antke. We'd still be spinning in circles without that evidence."

"And I am grateful that you don't bleed USEP colours," Klandra said in kind. Ali chuckled at the taurran's phrasing, but she appreciated the sentiment as they both signed off their call.

~-x-~

"Admiral!" Ali called as she spotted Grey ahead of her in the corridor. He turned at the abbreviation of his rank and paused to allow her to catch up. "What's the verdict?"

"We're due to rendezvous with the Faraday by the end of the day," Grey said, holding out a tablet for her to glance at. "As for the rest, The Forum don't want to make any promises yet, and you're not formally back on duty, but they have rescinded the arrest warrant for now."

"Just in case they find out I was the mastermind or something?" Ali half joked, or at least she hoped she was joking and they weren't about to stitch her up.

"They want you to present yourself because they have questions," Grey explained. "Which makes sense after you ran off, went rogue and then took down a sect that Barker first tried to do years ago…"

"And that's their opening arguments at my next court martial…" Ali said, looking up from the tablet with an innocent grin when she could feel Grey frown at her. "What? That is just my kind of luck."

"Please don't tempt fate."

Ali shrugged. "It's not as scary getting kicked out a second time."

"Are you plotting something that's gonna get in the way of our month long vacation?" Spud asked as she rounded on them.

"Or extend it," Ali chuckled, making Spud smile despite herself.

"You know, you haven't actually submitted a leave request yet…" Grey reminded his engineer.

"Oh man, you mean you're not putting the whole ship on leave to get the poor girl looked over?" Spud pretended to grumble. "It's not like we don't all deserve the rest."

"Or will need a month just to recover from whatever it is you'll be planning," Ali muttered innocently.

Spud shrugged the comment off, and even Grey didn't pretend to be in the dark about the plans his chief engineer must be making even though no one had actually said anything. "Not my fault if you're all unprepared."

"Is there any way to prepare for a Spud party?" Grey asked, making Ali giggle as Spud looked like she was giving the question serious consideration.

"Get to the party on time?" Spud finally suggested before continuing on her way.

Ali and Grey shared a knowing look as they finished up their informal briefing, both knowing that Spud would issue invitations when she had finalised her plan. In the meantime Ali was going to go and check in with Rila before they reunited with her ship and crew, knowing she wasn't going to have time to properly debrief them today, but she could at least deal with any serious issues if required.

As it turned out that once the Faraday had been able to get USEP to listen to them - apparently that had involved Waarlm overriding a door and Rila flouncing into a top level meeting - they had had relatively little issues getting people to take them seriously. It had helped that Rila's prior research had helped narrow down expected opponents to any investigation, but for the most part the very idea of allowing a Forum member to continue such practises met with much unease in many quarters.

By the time Spud called them all to the bar Ali realised that even though she thought she'd learnt never to have preconceptions about what might be awaiting her whenever Spud organised anything, she had been wrong. She wasn't sure if it was curiosity or trepidation that she felt about the covered silhouette in the corner.

It quickly became clear that she wasn't the only one when the conversation she overheard were people discussing potential unveilings. "What's the leading theory?" She asked as she joined Claire and Rila at the bar.

"If it didn't have a rectangular top, probably an effigy," Claire said with a worried giggle.

"Something you're going to use for cathartic destruction doesn't have to be that lifelike," Rila said as she considered the sheet.

"…and now I'm worried," Ali quipped, making Claire giggled.

Spud didn't keep them in suspense for too long, once the senior crews of the two ships had arrived she promptly hopped onto one of the low tables she'd already moved into place. Tun'luh made a disgruntled noise at her misusing his furniture, but she ignored him as she called for everyone's attention. "Now, as you probably all know, I'm not really good enough with words to be attempting to make a speech," she started, uncharacteristically nervous but determined. "After everything we've achieved recently we deserve a hell of a celebration, and we're gonna damn well have one, but I wanted to take a moment to include the important people who didn't make it this far." With more care than people were used to Spud showing, she unhooked the cloth covering from the stand and then pulled it away with a flourish to reveal a hastily yet respectfully assembled collage of all those they'd lost. Starting with some of the Endeavour crew they'd lost four years ago and ending with their most recent casualties.

"I know I'm not alone in wishing they were here to celebrate with us, so…" she trailed off as her words failed her for a moment, and Ali couldn't help but let a little flow of emotion through their tetnar. No words, just shared bittersweet joy to remind her that she wasn't alone. Spud found her in the crowd and gave her a watery smile. "Let's celebrate, commiserate and drink to fighting to live our best lives," she said as she raised her glass.

"Hear, hear!" Grey called in response, raising his glass as Ali joined in the call, sparking the rest of the room to toast with them.

Once Spud had taken a sip she practically rushed off the table to join her friends, and Ali caught her in a firm hug. "You did good," she promised into Spud's purple hair.

"Life is full of contradictions, and I think you've captured the spirit of today perfectly," Narla said when Spud finally came up for air.

Ali wasn't surprised that Spud necked her drink at that point, a way of trying to control the waves of conflicted emotion, so she joined the engineer and they were soon a number of drinks and conversations into the party. It might have started in a more subdued fashion than many of the parties Spud organised - or just accidentally started - but it didn't take long before the feelings of victory and relief started to take over and the atmosphere got more rambunctious.

It also wasn't a surprise that some people were more melancholy than others as she spotted a lone figure staring at the memorial images as they sipped at their drink. Ed noticed her approach and he briefly glared before sighing. "She'd want us to be happy, wouldn't she, skipper?"

Ali managed a rueful smile. "Probably," she admitted. "That doesn't mean she wouldn't understand that you don't quite see it that way."

Ed swallowed before taking a sip of his drink to hide the fact he needed to clear the emotion from his throat, then said, "it still just feels hollow."

"Yeah," Ali agreed softly. She could still remember the way she felt when they arrested Bert the first time. Happy it was over, sad that it had come to it, betrayed and a whole host of other emotions that just left her drained and empty. "One day at a time," she said after a moment. Anything else she could say would sound like an empty platitude.

"You're not gonna tell me to buck up and get it out of my system?"

Ali chuckled. "I'd hope you'd know me better than that by now."

Ed's lips twitched into half a wry smile. "Yeah… I just… I want to be here, I want to celebrate after everything it took, but…"

"There's no right or wrong," Ali reminded him. "Just do what feels right," she said, offering him the only advice she had. Then she remembered some advice she had received and said, "do what leaves you with the least regrets."

Ed nodded as he turned back to the collage, and Ali patted his arm before she left him to his thoughts. It would take time.

Etsile had just long enough to check with Ali how their pilot was doing before Spud and Rila managed to organise a dance floor. "Perhaps my concern for our crew's welfare is best waiting till tomorrow," he suggested. Ali bit back a giggle before grabbing his forearm and dragging him with her to join the dancing.

Honestly, she wasn't sure where they got the energy to dance with such abandon, and she soon lost track of time, judging it entirely by how many drinks she'd got through. They'd definitely done this too often to have a system to get their drinks to the dance floor with the fewest breaks possible, she mused as she leant on the bar to relay the order to Tun'luh.

Just as he turned to start on the drinks an empty glass appeared next to her elbow on the bar and Ali turned to it's owner, smiling at Ben. "So, you've taken down an evil, covert military operation… What're your plans after that?" He teased.

Ali tried not to giggle as she considered his question. "Well, the universe keeps creating more idiots, so I guess I've still got more people to stop blowing themselves up…" Ali figured with a sly smile and a shrug.

"By blowing them up yourself?"

Ali couldn't stop her giggle at his deadpanned response. "Yeah, it does tend to get out of hand, doesn't it?" She looked back at the dance floor as she said that, before catching Ben's eye as they both tried not to laugh only for Tun'luh to put the fresh drinks down in front of them.