It was going to take a while for Raini's ship to collect the man from the shore so Mercy, after leaving instructions for her body to continuously transmit all its sensor data, detached herself from it and took control of one of the bodies onboard the Seat of Royalty. As she expected Argument and Curiosity were both waiting for her in the central chamber.

“Your progress appears to have slowed,” Argument said without bothering with any form of greeting.

“Blame the creatures, or the Hunters.”

“The Hunters?” Curiosity took a step forward.

“Why did they begin the pacification so soon? Don't we usually wait a few days in order to collect data on the planet before we clear them from it,” Although Mercy, having been built on the last planet, had never been present during a planet’s pacification she'd checked with Knowledge beforehand. According to her it was to allow the Seekers to find the most useful starting locations for industry so that when they began the pacification the Hunters and Warriors could clear out those areas first.

“Judgment is still looking into it. It was Lord of War who made the decision,” Argument said.

“He could have asked me first,” Anger seeped into Mercy's lights. Why did he have to argue with her now, for once could he not just admit he was wrong?

“But he didn't need too,” Argument said. Like always he spoke without any emotion, as if that would strengthen his position. Curiosity took another step forward, placing himself between the two. An old habit from when the Scatha had only used light or directed lasers to communicate.

“Enough,” Curiosity said. “How long are you intending to stay with the creatures? The Hunters and Warriors need to know so they can schedule them for pacification.”

“Until I find this missing memory module. It might not have all the answers on it, but it's my only lead at the moment.”

“And in the meantime you’re wasting precious moments,” Curiosity's lights held a hint of disapproval, as would anyone's Mercy knew. Time was one of the few resources the Scatha didn't have some form of control over. To waste it was a sin.

“In the meantime, I can be here searching for other leads. These creatures won't even notice I'm gone.”

“We could have someone else control the body if you want,” Argument suggested, peaking around Curiosity’s body. “They could just pretend to be you.”

“No.” Both Argument and Curiosity looked at her, the dancing lights of confusion played across their faces. “I'm not having someone else in that body, not after Warrior Over Shoulder. I want everyone on that ship safe for now.”

“We understand, it will not happen again,” Curiosity said.

“Between the Hunters and Warrior Over Shoulder I might no longer be able to complete this investigation, I just hope that the missing memory module can be found.”

“The memory module might not have been enough.” Argument said, pointing out the blatantly obvious just because he could. Mercy again found herself wishing he'd just know when to be quiet.

“But it might have, and I don't have to answer to you.” she snapped. Her light flickering off the two other bodies. Argument finally fell dark after she said that, and it was a few moments before Curiosity spoke.

“What do you intend to do while you’re with the fleet?”

“While I was on the Raini's ship I had a thought, everyone there knew each other, had probably known each other for years, we know from tests that their memory is inefficient and imperfect, but ours is not.”

Argument again leapt into the fray and Mercy wondered if he could even help himself, or that if he could, would he want to. “But the records have been tampered with,” he said triumphantly.

“Knowledge,” Mercy sang out to one of the audio sensors that must have been littering the Seat of Royalty. After a second one of the unused King class bodies, that had been sitting down next to the chambers wall, stood. Mercy could have done this entire conversation privately of course, but she wanted the others to hear it.

“I am here,” Knowledge said with subdued lights.

“How many Warriors exist?”

“Approximately 6.9 billion.” The answer came back right away.

“And how many types of sensors do each one have that might be used to identify another Warrior?”

“Four types, but there may be more than one of each. Short Range Radio Identification, Light Based Communication, Audio Based Communications and Radio Based Communications would all identify a Warrior. Number of sensors vary within each body depending on design, age, and personal preference.” Mercy turned back to the other two, suspecting that Curiosity already knew what she was thinking.

“Someone has already removed our victim's name from all the obvious places, but they could not have removed every single reference by now. Think about it, even if each warrior only had one of each sensor that's still 26.7 billion sensors recording: in some cases for thousands of years. No one could have searched through all the records yet. It's just too much data. All we need to do is find a Warrior in those recordings who doesn't appear on the list of Warriors.”

“I see,” Argument said, for once actually sounding convinced. “But that must be a...” he trailed off. struggling for a suitable word, “a galactic, enormous, gigantic amount of data.”

“Which is why even if the murder had started removing references to the dead warrior there would still be billions, if not trillions of them left,” Mercy said, slightly proud of her line of reasoning. She was enjoying finally being useful.

“Then how do we make sure we find a reference before the murderer does?” Argument asked.

“It's very simple, we out number him.”

***

Scatha, when performing similar tasks, liked to be together. It was a throwback to the old days before it was possible to communicate to someone on the other side of the planet with as much ease as to someone standing a meter away. These days they said that they liked the camaraderie, and the feeling of support. Mercy just liked the idea of all different types of Scatha coming together for one purpose and she was always interested to see who would turn up to claim they had the right to help.

This time it appeared that almost everyone had some sort of claim. There were Seekers of almost all types of course. Only those who studied the extremes of the Sciences had not answered the call, but they were outnumbered tenfold by the Seekers who had. There were Seekers who dealt in Scatha history, Seekers of mathematics who were there for the odds, Seekers of the mind, who were going to record how other Seekers searched through the data, even Seekers of culture who were there primarily to study such a gathering of other Seekers. All had promised to donate some of their own runtime to the search.

Compassion's children had also sent their own delegation, as had Judgment's although they were much smaller groups than the Seekers. The only group who had sent nothing had been the Warriors, even one or two of the more eccentric Hunters had turned up, to them it didn't matter if your quarry was hidden in a forest of trees or a forest of memories, it still needed to be tracked down.

Mercy, Curiosity and Argument had relocated from the Seat of Royalty to the larger and more accommodating Carrier of Great Burdens who had filled his decks with millions of Scatha wanting to take part in what was already being called Mercy's Great Search. One transport hadn't been enough, and soon the transports Ghosts of Distant Voices and Will Hold Tightly had been ordered to do the same. Mercy had wondered if the transports themselves might have wanted to help, but they didn't appear to care.

Mercy herself stood in one of the tertiary storage bays staring out at the sea of random shapes in front of her. Perhaps twenty thousand of them. She didn't want to waste time finding the correct bodies for everyone, but most people were fairly happy with what they had. Besides her stood Curiosity in a Kings body, some people were too important to be kept merely 'fairly happy.'

“Does everyone understand what we are doing?” Mercy asked, aware that she was speaking to millions of Scatha across the fleet. The storm of responses was deafening, and once they had finished Mercy asked Knowledge to prioritize all communications sent to her and filter out everything below urgent.

“If you do find anything, remember to signal it instantly. Those who can see me can do so by raising one hand.” It would be easier than trying to filter out potentially thousands of radio messages, audio communication would get confusing and colored lights would be utterly impossible with potentially thousands at once.

A whine came from the crowd.

“You can just increase your altitude to fly above the crowd Finder of Small Things,” she said in response. She hadn't realized the drone was even attending but one more hand wouldn't hurt. “You may begin.”

Across the collective consciousness that made up the Scatha Knowledge was bracing herself for the mass of data that was about to be accessed. Mercy waited a short time, out of deference for the Queen, before diving right into a random selection of data. She scanned over images and through radio logs of a battle ten thousand years ago.

--Leader of Warriors #6689 requesting orders.--

--Targets #887549 have been pacified, no casualties.--

--Hunter without Fear engaging primary target, requesting secondary target--

--Rigid Thinking Warrior moving group #86 to #1129 into position. Stand by--

Thousands of voices flooded through Mercy's mind, filling everything except for a small piece that was monitoring her video sensors. It was like standing up to a storm of feelings that could swallow you whole if you let go for a instance.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

--Hunter without Pity has spotted new targets moving in from sector #18--

--Warrior #8393849382 has suffered a malfunction, requesting support.--

--Taker of Pain acknowledges distress, moving to your position. Requests Escort--

--Hunter with Long Eyes will provide protection, no danger spotted.--

The process that had been monitoring her video sensors abruptly signalled that someone had raised their hand and Mercy halted the search. Looking rather sheepishly in the center of the crowded was a Seeker with their arm raised.

“You have found something Seeker of Lost Particles?” The Seeker didn't respond until everyone in the great search started focusing their attention on him. Finally, he turned to look at his up raised arm.

“I do not remember doing that.” A feeling of nervousness settled over Mercy; she knew it wouldn't take everyone that long to figure it out.

“A malfunction?” Curiosity asked. Mercy signalled a negative with a blaze of lights.

“Our murderer is watching us. He is removing the information from our minds as soon as we find it,” Knowledge said. The collective mental shudder that ran through the minds of the Scatha was strong enough to destroy mountains but to Mercy’s surprise no one said a word. Then she realized that they were all expecting her to solve it.

“Very well,” she said a little hesitantly, “this is what we do. Everyone download the memory that you are searching through directly to your body, now. I don't want any transmissions going out anywhere, nothing, no radio, no audio, nothing even visual. We will do a thirty second search and only then get more data. As soon as you find something, blast it out in every way you can. Don't think about it, don't analyse it, just transmit.” That would give them thirty seconds of silence, anything that was transmitted at that time would be picked up by thousands of other minds, whoever was deleting data wouldn't have time to delete it all.

“Begin again,” she ordered once everyone had downloaded thirty seconds of data.

--Hunter without Rest: No damage-- Ah, thought Mercy, a casualty list. Well, everyone in a fight had to report back afterwards didn't they.

--Hunter without Sight: No damage-- She could probably skip the Hunters, it had been a Warrior that had been hurt after all.

--Rigid Thinking Warrior: No damage-- Almost all of them would be perfectly fine of course. She checked the name off on Knowledge's list of Warriors. It was the first.

--Free think- Something cut off her thoughts again as Curiosity emitted a strange sound and light display.

“I had it,” he shouted. “I had it in my voice processor, I had it in my radio commands list, I-” He turned and smashed both his fists into the side of the bulkhead. Mercy made a note to apologize to Carrier of Great Burdens afterwards. “So close, and he was so quick as well.”

“Is it all gone?” Mercy asked.

“Yes, but I still remember doing it, which is more than our Seeker friend had. Maybe the murderer is having problems coping with all of us at once.” It was a likely explanation. It would be almost impossible to monitor so many minds at once and respond so quickly.

“Very well, we will do this again, hopefully if two of us pick up the name at the same time he won't be able to stop both.”

They started again without any questions, but Mercy could tell, with a hint of fear. This time however Mercy decided to do something a little different. It was only the work of a moment to re-write her search algorithm. This time if she found the answer there would be no pause, no chance to think about it. The instant it was found it would be routed to her communications center and transmitted, subconsciously as it were, she wouldn't even know about it. If the murderer could keep pace with the mind of Curiosity, a King, then Mercy would need anything to give her an extra edge.

She began the search again. This time on construction records.

--Hunter without Fear: Complete--

--Warrior Sub-Leader #87987987 Complete--

--Warrior Sub-Leader #87987988 Complete--

--Free Thinking Warrior: Complete--

“Mercy!” Curiosity shouted. “You said it.” She forced her mind to shift back to the physical world again.

“W-What?” Curiosity, and everyone else was staring at her.

“You shouted it out. Free Thinking Warrior, no one's ever heard of him before.”

“So, this technique works.” she said, still not quite believing it. She couldn't remember any of it but a quick check with Knowledge confirmed it. Every Scatha in the room remembered her shouting out the name. Mercy collected her thought processes and returned them all to normal. She scanned her memory again, looking for some sort of clue or evidence that it had been tampered with but found nothing. It was not right, she thought to herself, what else could have been deleted? Would they have to complete the entire investigation with this method. “We need a better way.”

Curiosity gazed down at her like she was a child. “But not even I can think of a better way. Or maybe I already have done, maybe that was deleted as well.”

“What we need,” Mercy began hoping that plenty of other minds were listening to her, “Is someone who's memories cannot be deleted.”

“Impossible. Such a person doesn't exist,” Argument said, she'd almost forgotten he was with the group. “We don't even know how the killer is doing this, how can any Scatha defend from that?”

“You are correct of course,” Mercy said, relishing the coming victory. “Which is why we don't use a Scatha. We use Raini Kasom.”

***

The body on Raini's ship signaled that she had come into proximity of it. Mercy gave her thanks to the other Scatha and returned to the vessel. She was standing in front of Mercy, one hand on her hip, the other holding her odd gun. The creatures manning the cannon hadn't moved, but there was a new creature. He appeared older, but Mercy noticed that he did not carry himself in the same way as the other older creatures had been observed to elsewhere. His stance was straighter, stronger, more like Innvolia's had been before the Hunters had killed him. He was however, standing a respectful distance away from Mercy. Out of reach.

“Is this one of them then?” he asked.

“I am Mercy, of the Clan Compassion, of the Scatha,” she responded, hoping that they had finally gotten the greeting syntax correct.

The man smiled slightly and gave a small bow. “I think that's the second oddest greeting I've had all day. I am Avon, Surgeon General of the Kasom.” Mercy wished she could smile back, just a small one, enough to tell him that they had a record of him saying almost the exact same sentence.

“So, what do you want to speak to him about?” Raini asked.

“I wanted to speak to the man who had viewed the body of our Warrior outside of your city.”

“That was Kraven, you killed him,” Avon said sharply.

“Shame,” said Raini with a hint of bitterjoy in her voice. “If you hadn't started this war, he'd be on deck right now, I don't care either way of course, but you dug your own grave with that one.”

“Did he say anything to you about seeing one of us before?” She ignored Raini's comment.

“Not a thing.” Avon said with a surprising amount of joy. A team of Hunters, keeping pace with the ship as it moved down the coast signalled that they were ready to begin the attack.

“Nothing?” Mercy said. She noticed that a hint of fear had crept onto Raini's face.

“Nothing at all,” Avon said.

“Did Captain Raini inform you that this ship has only not been attacked because I believed it to be useful?” She couldn't have been that stupid.

“Yes, she did.”

“Then I do not see any further point maintaining that deal. Thank you for your assistance, Captain Raini of the Kasom, I will inform the Hunters to be efficient.” It was a bluff of course. Raini had gone white, and her crew around her had stopped whatever they had been doing and were also staring at her. In what must have been an attempt at being unseen several moved to grab hold of whatever weapons were at hand.

“We could of course make a new deal," Avon suggested without even a hint of fear.

“You have nothing to offer.” Smiling he reached insides his jacket and withdrew a small black cylinder in perfect condition. Immediately Mercy sent a message to the Hunter team ordering them to stay as far back as they could then sized up the distance between herself and Avon. Could she grab it?

Avon was already moving to the other side of the deck, with the hand holding the cylinder her leaned over the edge.

“That will not cause to much damage to it,” Mercy said, hoping the creature wouldn't be able to tell she was lying. She didn't want to see even a scratch on it. Not a single bit of lost data.

“Let me finish,” Avon said and dropped the memory container into one of the cannons. Smiling he picked up the cannon's firing mechanism, a piece of string attached to a mechanism holding some flint. “I believe, however, that this cannon, and the eighteen pounds of iron inside it, will do a very good job of scattering it over a very wide area.” Mercy didn't know what to say. These creatures were smart, she'd known that of course. Even having boats and cities and weapons made them leagues above any other creature the Scatha had run into, but she'd never expected them to be so devious.

“Captain Raini,” Avon said, “would you mind negotiating a new and far better deal?” The color had returned to Raini face, and it was her turn to smile.

“Certainly.” Mercy knew that Raini did not only have her full attention, but the attention of more than a thousand Scatha minds as well. It had been an effective piece of theatre. “Call off this invasion, find another world.” Judgment's own will pressed down on her's and Mercy knew that he would never accept.

“We cannot do that; we need this world.”

“We don't want anything else, leave this world or I'll send whatever that thing is into the next.” Mercy disconnected herself and quickly moved to a new body on the Seat of Royalty. She didn't bother with the greetings again, most of the Kings had been watching her.

“I need that memory storage,” she said. The bodies of Judgment and Curiosity loomed down at her.

“I understand,” said Curiosity.

“But we cannot let these creatures, or this murderer jeopardize our search. We need this world,” boomed Judgment.

“There must be something we can give them. Maybe some sort of compromise?” Judgment's lights dimmed to a quiet, almost mournful, negative. A process from the body below indicated that Raini was about to speak again. Mercy reconnected with that body.

“Doesn't matter what you say or do, one way or another you are leaving this world,” Raini said.

“We cannot. I've asked, the kings refuse to do so.” There was a slight amount of bitterness in those words, although Mercy knew that Raini would never notice it. Once again Mercy had run up against a wall of inflexibly. The Kings wanted something, and there was no room for a lower mind to argue. Well, except for Argument, but they all ignored him anyway.

“This is our home, why don't you find a part of it that we don't occupy and live there. We'll ignore you if you ignore us.” Mercy raced back to the Seat of Royalty, Raini's words had given her time to think.

“I am the Mercy to All Living Things, dealing with other species is my mandate. I declare that compromise is needed.”

Judgment looked at her with odd colours in his eyes. “They are not another species, they are not alive, they will be dealt with like all the other creatures,” he said.

In the back of the room Compassion stood. “They have no soul, when one body is destroyed, they do not travel to another,” she said.

“Neither did Free Think Warrior,” Mercy countered. Where was Argument when she needed him?

“His soul,” Judgment said leaning in close, “is lost, but one day will be recovered. That is the difference.” Mercy, temporarily defeated, retreated back to the surface.

“They won't compromise,” she told Raini. “I don't think they can.”

“Then they'd better learn. It's called negotiation. There are large areas of this land that we don't inhabit. You can stay there as long as you like. Neither of us will get what we want but we both have to start somewhere. It's like practice for later.” Mercy thought about the Hunters and Warriors, who were at this moment clearing much larger areas of land than Raini would be able to comprehend. Would they back down now that they had started having their fun? Mercy had an idea and found herself back in front of Judgment.

“What is it?” the King asked with annoyance in his light.

“What if we pretend they are alive?”

“What?” shouted Curiosity. “What use is that?”

“It will give us experience with real living creatures. It's a dry run, practice. We don't know how real life will turn out so dealing with them could be a simulation if you will.” It was a bit of a stretch, but she knew that if she didn't get her hands on that data cylinder then that would be the end of the investigation. Mercy did not want her first task, that granted was not part of her mandate, to end in failure.

“It's absurd,” Curiosity said. “They are not alive; they do not have the mindset of a living creature.”

“How do you know that?” Mercy felt a faint glimmer of hope. “Did we meet another living species while I was on the planet? Did no one inform me of your extensive experience in dealing with them?” Argument would be proud. Compassion walked up to the three and Mercy could tell that she desperately wanted to help her.

“We are already creating these artificial people using their DNA,” Compassion said. Her lights were subdued. “If Mercy's experiment is not valid, then neither is Judgment’s.” At that moment all three of them turned to look at the King who had been silent since Mercy's suggestion.

“It is an interesting idea, but ultimately flawed.” Mercy saw in the reflection from Judgments video sensors her own lights start to take on a shade of red in anger. “However, just because it is flawed does not mean it is worthless. We cannot give them what they want, but we may be able to gain for ourselves what Mercy would call 'experience'.”

“That's not a very good reason,” Curiosity said weakly, but they all knew that he had lost.

“It's good enough,” Mercy said and returned to the Sea Dancer.