Nec Tede looked shocked. "Two of your people are missing?" he echoed.

"That is correct. One of them is my chief science officer, Cenz - the alien in my entourage when we met." Brooks studied the man's face, but he appeared genuinely surprised.

"And the other?" the Governor asked.

"Lieutenant Pirra, a Dessei," Brooks replied.

"Another xeno, huh? They do seem to stick together, don't they?"

Brooks scowled. "Surely you can find them with your colony's sensory system."

The man laughed. "Oh, Captain, I'm afraid out here we don't have the kinds of resources you have in the Sapient Union. We can't afford a full internal sensor system - at least, not yet."

Brooks crossed his arms. "Their disappearance seems remarkably suspicious, Governor. I expect them to return unharmed."

"I promise you that my people would never harm them," the man replied. "But I will dispatch some teams to find them, just in case."

"Thank you. Tell me Governor, do you think anyone else in the colony might be a danger to them?"

"I trust my people, Captain, but I can't make guarantees. Don't forget that I have enemies in this system, and there are traders from both colonies here. We can't rule out such . . . outside interference trying to damage relationships between us by targeting your people."

"You never mentioned this danger," Brooks noted. "I should have been informed if you thought this was a serious risk."

"I didn't think it was serious - only that we can't rule it out. I do have to add, though, Captain, that if your people have caused trouble then they will have to face justice."

"Justice like what you wish to do to Apollonia Nor?" Brooks asked.

"Captain, that is an internal matter, and I advise you to stay out of it," the Governor replied. "We are not members of your Union yet."

Brooks leaned closer to the screen. "If you wish for membership, there are standards of behaviour expected of you. Not to mention standards if you wish to remain in friendly trade relations."

The Governor did not seem phased by that. "I hope your people return soon, Captain."

The call was ended.

Brooks turned to see that Urle was waiting.

"I sent your message, Captain," he said.

"Was there any response?"

"Yes," Urle replied. "3,627 new civilians have transferred aboard the Craton, as of twenty-two minutes ago."

Logus looked between the two men in confusion. He felt certain that that number was not correct; he could not recall the precise number, but he did know that they were facing a net loss of civilian population; after the events with the Leviathan, over two thousand were leaving.

Brooks turned to him. "What do you make of the Governor, Doctor?"

"I firmly believe he's lying," Logus replied. Concern furrowed his brow and he shook his head. "He's playing some kind of game, I fear. Something foolish."

"The man's been playing these insane colonial politics so long that he can't think outside of them," Urle noted. "If he hurts our people, does he think there will be no repercussions?"

Brooks frowned and considered a moment. "The man is either completely insane, or there's something important we're missing."

"I vote that he is suffering from a severe psychosis from his unhealthy environment. The state of his colony is abysmal; this place is dying," Logus replied. "No one one could be ignorant of that, and yet he deludes himself."

"He's legitimately desperate," Urle said. "If things get much worse here, then there's a real chance that one of the other two colonies might step in - and his people might welcome it."

Brooks was silent again, his gaze distant.

"We need time," he noted. "Time to find our people, and time to convince the Governor to let Nor leave with us. Time to find out what's going on."

"Time gives him more chance to enact more plots," Urle said sourly.

"Yes - if he feels pressured," Brooks replied. "Which means that we need to make him think he's going to get what he wants."

"We just can't lie," Logus replied with a frown. "If we make promises, we're obliged to keep them."

"I wouldn't lie," Brooks said. "But time ultimately will play to our side."

Urle nodded, and Logus frowned. "Is that the significance of your question and the answer, Captain?"

A smile crossed Brooks's face. "Commander Urle sent the message to a specific transmitter on the Craton that we use as a way to signal there's trouble. Her response is not about people, but how many hours and minutes until she can arrive."

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Logus let out a laugh. "So the Governor gets excited thinking you might be willing to play his game and you call for the cavalry."

"Yes. But she's 36 hours out, which is a long time for our people and Apollonia Nor."

"Too long," Urle noted. "Captain, permission to send out our drones in a search-and-rescue mode."

"Granted," Brooks said.

"Aren't they part of the ship's security system?" Logus asked.

Concern creased Brooks's face. "Yes. We'll be more vulnerable until they return. But our people are out there and we want them back."

Urle sat up suddenly, alarm clear on what was visible of his face. "Sir, did you give Ambassador Kell permission to leave the ship?"

Brooks snapped his gaze to Urle, his face tightening. "I certainly did not. He shouldn't even be able to get out the doors."

"I just ran a scan, Captain, and he's not on the ship."

*******

It felt like something was on the back of his neck.

Jeb kept scratching at it, his rough gloves rubbing the skin raw. But there was nothing there to rub away.

Moments after he stopped, he felt it again.

It was the goddamned witch in the other room, he knew it. She'd done something to him, something that would only stop when the Governor finally spaced the bitch.

He wanted to be there to see it, but he also was terrified that she would curse them all with her last breath. Spacing a person killed them, sure, but it didn't kill their everlasting soul. It would just continue to be out in the Dark, looking for a way back in.

He'd always heard the stories of the monsters in the vacuum, of the lost and angry spirits of the killers and cannibals who'd been spaced. He'd never believed them, not truly believed them, until he'd seen the witch.

With her strange eye that seemed to glow with its own light, to be an unnatural shade of violet when every camera failed to capture it, he was sure she was one of the curse-born. A baby whose soul had been replaced by one of those vengeful spirits of the Dark that slipped in and found a new body to inhabit . . .

The door in front of him opened, and he snapped to attention.

"Sir!" Jeb barked, straightening as best he could. He was holding his rifle wrong, he realized, and fumbled to hold it properly.

Governor Tede didn't chew him out, though, only staring at him with an intensity Jeb had never seen before. "Leave," the Governor ordered.

A dumbfounded expression went over his face. "Sir?"

"I need to speak to the Seer. Come back later."

"Uh . . . yes sir."

His heart was pounding; was the Governor going to kill her now? Jeb wasn't sure why he felt so alarmed, he'd met the Governor a dozen times. Well, at least been in the same room with him. But this time he felt terrified and he couldn't even say why. His stomach was doing flips and he wasn't even the one in danger.

He just obeyed. Hell if he was gonna cross the man. That's how one got spaced, and more than dying in the Dark he feared those spirits that would come for him.

Once Jeb was gone, the Governor opened the door and stepped into the small cellblock, opening the last door to the Seer's cell.

He stood there, waiting for her to acknowledge him.

"My god," she breathed. "You're real."

"No matter what shape I take, you can see what I truly am," Kell spoke.

The woman was quiet for a long moment. She stepped closer.

"All my life I've seen things in my dreams," she said, her voice soft.

Carefully, slowly, she reached up a hand.

"Things that called to me."

Her had jerked back as if she'd been burned.

"Things in the Dark. I never wanted them to be real."

Kell's shape barely even registered to her, and the Shoggoth was not even sure if the woman saw it at all, or only saw what was beyond it.

"I exist," Kell said. To her ears it was not the voice of the Governor, but a chorus of soft voices speaking together.

"Why are you here?" Apollonia demanded. "I'll be spaced soon. Couldn't you just take me then?" She jerked her gaze away. "Is it necessary to torture me more? I just wanted it to be peaceful before the end."

"It will never be peaceful for you," Kell said. But its voices lacked poison, and her gaze was drawn back to it.

"Not while I'm alive. It's why I want to stay here and die," she replied.

"Even then, you will not know peace," Kell replied. Curiosity sparked it to speak again; "What is it that you see that is so terrible?"

Something changed in the woman. The Dark encroached on them, and even Kell felt stirrings in it that it had never encountered before. Strange formations that a human mind shouldn't be able to conceive, yet she was the cause of them existing, even if she did not realize it.

Her hair seemed to meld smoothly into that Darkness, and Kell could not tell where she ended and the Dark began.

"I have seen an ocean of blood crashing," she spoke.

Her voice had a new tenor, and Kell could see the shapes that ensued. Her words alone affected the underlying reality; did she know? Did she know just what she was?

Because Kell was unsure.

Her voice came again, and reality blurred more in a way that Kell at once found foreign and familiar. "I have seen lives beyond counting drowned in it."

She seemed to deflate; the shadows became mundane once more, something Kell found curious.

"And I can't bear to see it," she finished.

"Your death does not mean they will not die," Kell said. "All things die."

"Except your kind," she replied. Bitterness crept into her voice.

"My kind are like the things of which you think. But they are not the same. We may not die easily, but we can die." Kell shook its head. "There used to be so many more of us."

"I've never seen Earth," she said, correctly divining his origins. "So I don't know."

"Perhaps one day you will," Kell replied.

Her eyes narrowed. "If I keep living."

"If you keep living," Kell repeated.

A pall started to form between them, but Kell broke it. "Do not choose to die here. You only need to say yes to Brooks."

She closed her eyes. "And face what may come."

"Yes," Kell replied.

Her eyes opened, and in the violet glow Kell saw a hole to depths of reality that even his kind had never ventured to.

"All right," she said.

"I will inform him." Kell turned to the door and left.