No matter how many times Spatha looked over McCullough’s documents, she couldn’t find anything truly out of the ordinary. It was so normal that it was illogical. Spatha had an atrocious record with the various record-keeping agencies that oversaw the Aerial Knights; her personnel file overstated her height by six centimeters and somehow managed to say that she was born on Aralush, despite Aralush being an Idrisat Brood world and Spatha being of the Oxilini Brood. To imagine that the humans were diligent on some things and not on others seemed quite unlikely. Yes, the Lyrans were notoriously stringent regarding accurate records, but they didn’t make tiny mistakes, like what she was seeing with McCullough. It just wasn’t normal to be so average.

With a sigh, Spatha leaned back in her chair. What in the Ancestor’s name was she talking about? Of course it was possible that humans just weren’t quite as thorough about war as the most militaristic species in the known universe; there was a middle ground between incompetent and preternaturally skilled. Spatha hated to say it, but maybe Darren was just being paranoid. McCullough was in an edition of a Corruptibles dossier, sure, but Corruptibles just highlighted various elements of countries that might have been open to compromise with the Poslushi; it didn’t mean that he was a sympathizer.

Now that she thought of it, Darren couldn’t have been happy cooped up in a military hospital. Sitting back up, she grabbed her phone and punched in a few numbers.

“Who would you like to contact?” a pleasant synthetic voice chimed.

“Operator, get me Darren Hardwell, Alpha Centauri III, Commonwealth of Aldrin.” Spatha said hurriedly.

“Connecting…” the operator disconnected, followed by a few short rings. Then, Darren picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Darren. It’s Spatha. Are you doing alright?” Spatha said, unsure of how she was going to put what she would inevitably have to say.

“I’m…” Darren trailed off. It was obvious that he didn’t really want to answer. “I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.”

“I’ve been worried about you, Darren,” Spatha said, looking off at her office door and to the space beyond, “I can’t imagine you really enjoy it in that hospital.”

“Oh, no, that’s not the issue at hand.”

Spatha’s antennae perked up. “Oh?”

“It’s nice here. I can sleep in if I want, I don’t have to run out and fight every other day…” Darren sighed, “good God, you don’t realize how much of your life you spend fighting for it until you aren’t in constant, immediate danger.”

“Yes, that’s a funny thing about humans. You have an extremely adaptive sense of perspective.” Spatha noted. Immediately after she said those words, she didn’t like the clinical tone of them.

“You don’t?”

“Well, yes, but…” Spatha faltered, trying to think of what to say, “it’s complicated. You see, the Lyrans, they adjust their perspectives to the highest amongst them; it’s why they have so many laws to deter people from murdering their betters out of envy. The Yolyski almost have the opposite problem; they–”

“I didn’t ask about the Yolyski. I asked about you.” Darren cut her off.

“We’re–we’re–” Spatha stumbled over the words, “we’re just different.”

“You just don’t want to admit that we have something in common, do you?” Darren guessed. The worst part about it was that he was right.

Spatha sighed, conceding defeat. “Look, if I pointed out all the similarities between your kind and ours, we would be here for too long. The point I made when you first met me stands; we’re too similar. If nature decided to make you stout and hard and shiny, you would just be Poslushi.”

Spatha knew what humans did to people who were too similar. If they were nice, they would call them posers and say that they were just trying to get benefits by passing as a more privileged group. If they weren’t, well… Spatha had read about a people that the humans called Jews. They would move into the cities of many lands, learning the language, making friends, and rising to high positions. And yet, they were shunned, cast out, slaughtered, even, at almost every turn for centuries. In the eyes of those who betrayed them, they were so similar that they could be anybody, but just different enough that they could be evil.

Poslushi had squabbles; humans had pogroms. Poslushi saw something different and aspired to assimilate or exploit it, while humans didn’t see different things; they saw themselves and enemies, as remnants of their fragmented tribes. Now that she thought of it, Spatha wasn’t so sure what a future of human ascendancy would mean for her people. Maybe she should’ve considered that before she signed on to be their Quisling.

“You’re not going to get over the divide between peoples by insisting that we can’t be reconciled,” Darren reasoned, “that just isn’t how things work.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Spatha sighed. “Fine. You’re right. Do you want to hear about what I’ve been doing?”

“Shoot, Spatha.”

“Well, I’ve got bad news.”

Darren paused for a moment. When he started talking again, Spatha could almost feel the bitterness in his voice. “You couldn’t catch the bastard, could you?”

“Oh, no, he’s still in our sights,” Spatha said, looking over the documents on her laptop, “it’s just that he’s spotless. There’s nothing in his file to suggest that he’s anything more than what he’s put himself out to be. Darren, it’s possible that–”

“Don’t say it.” Darren cut her off.

Spatha stopped, annoyed, then continued on. “You can’t deny it. Maybe he’s innocent in this whole affair.”

“Spatha,” Darren began, a growl forming on the edges of his voice, “I need you to do something for me. I need you to contact the HMS Kalgoorlie and request my radio back. That son of a bitch was listening to us die, I’m sure of it. The logs from the radio will show you that much.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Spatha answered him. “I’ll do it, but don’t hold your breath.”

Darren chuckled darkly. “Lord knows I won’t.”

—

Br-r-ring.

Br-r-r-r-ring.

Click.

“Hello; this is J. Herald speaking,” Herald said as he put the phone to his ear.

“It’s Hoover; we need to talk.” the gruff voice of the Director of the CIA buzzed through the line.

“Yes, sir?” Herald nodded inquisitively, leaning forward in his chair.

“Our ELINT stations on the front are picking up communications between Combine worlds. It appears that the High Judge has announced her intent to raise all available troops from her subjects and point them towards us in the near future.”

Herald took a sharp breath. “How much is that?”

“Taking all things into consideration, it’s quite likely that we could be facing forces numbering several hundred million.”

“I’ll throw another hundred bil at the warhead manufacturers, if that’s what you want me to do.”

“Now, hold on, Mr. President,” Hoover said, a twinge of apprehension in his voice, “we’ve judged some other things from this dilemma too. Notably, as the message passes from planet to planet, we’ve seen that it gets a little more reluctant and critical with every jump.”

Herald nodded, the pieces starting to fall together in his mind. “They don’t like the order.”

“Not one bit, sir. They’re a feudal society; their leaders are loath to part with any more resources than they’re legally obligated to give. This is, of course, exacerbated by the highly hierarchical and underhanded nature of Combine politics. In effect, it seems to be that any official of more than nominal importance is afraid that they will be usurped by enemies who have, no doubt, understated their own forces to reserve them for attacking their neighbors.”

Herald smiled; this he could capitalize on. “They’re getting paranoid.”

“Exactly; they’re stuck in a situation where no one can give up their troops if anyone retains them. They’ll be jumping at shadows, thinking that others are scheming against them, because that’s what they would do in this case. If such a thing were to persist, it’s almost certain that someone would panic and, uh…” Herald could practically hear Hoover’s smile, “do something rash.”

“And I imagine that you have a plan?”

“With some minor on-the-fly modifications, the Thule-class missile cruisers can be retrofitted to carry stealth transports in their shuttle bays. And, Mr. President, you personally signed off on giving our black-ops forces training on how to modify Poslushi energy rifles to better accommodate human biology. With some controlled chaos on Poslushi worlds, coupled with some irrefutable evidence of the involvement of their fellow bug, we can make it so that their fears are far more real, and then we’ll…”

“Continue until someone cocks up.” Herald finished his sentence.

“Precisely, Mr. President.”

“Get it done. I want them up in arms.” Herald ordered.

Hoover laughed. “Your wish is my command.”

—

The Poslushi manning the radar stations speckled around Omen had long since given up trying to find the ghost ships, and instead concentrated on far more pressing concerns, such as the torpedoes they launched. If they could see the torpedoes, then they could warn the fleet, and maybe they could intercept some of them before they laid waste to yet more of Her Dominance’s navy. Maybe they would catch a torpedo themselves for their service, but it was a risk they had to take, or else face terrible slavery at the hands of mankind. For their children, and their children’s children, they would serve.

But it wasn’t meant to be.

The sentries manning the perimeters of several of the more powerful arrays didn’t even have time to plead for mercy. The soldier’s rifles let off barely a buzz, and the guards fell where they stood as beams of microwave energy flash-cooked their internal organs. Once or twice, a previously-unseen soldier in a guard tower would jump up from inattention, panicking and running for the alarm, only to be cruelly cut short as the energy blasts scattered their boiling brain matter across the walls. Thus, all remained silent.

They had been expecting to stop an attack before it breached the complexes; the few guards the SOG personnel encountered were alone and easily dispatched. One by one, they cleared the various spaces of the outer buildings. With the exception of a few engineers working on a faulty generator in one compound (who were cut down before they could so much as scream), they were empty; almost all of those manning the installations were at their posts scanning the skies. Thus, they went inward, towards the great radar dishes and antennae that defined the purpose of these remote locales.

With a great crash, the doors to the sensor and communications rooms were knocked from their hinges. Men stood up from their consoles, hands put up defensively; soldiers reached for their weapons; officers went for their swords. None of them could do anything before a shower of microwave bursts sent them crashing to the floor, their instrumentation bursting out in great showers of sparks. When all was said and done, the most well-trained radar crews on Omen had been slaughtered to a man, and flames were beginning to lick the most powerful sensors at the planet’s disposal. The SOG men made their exit, fleeing into the forests to await a new assignment, leaving their targets behind to burn down.

When the Judge of Omen caught wind that such damage had been done, she went ballistic. She railed against the two-timing blackguards of Pollanide, how they had surely done this to blind her to their ships coming to offload their deadly cargo and end her reign and her life. Even when her attendants tried to calm her, she wouldn’t listen, and even went so far as to dismiss one of her more vocal aides on the spot, condemning him as a plant for the enemy. When she finally calmed down, she ordered, in an all-too-grim voice, that they be ready for any threat, inside or out.

Mission accomplished.