03 - The Savior.

“Fire!”

A single order rose to rifles roaring in their airting of sparks into hailstorms on flesh. Sharp snaps impacted, rung and ruptured, drowning all sounds but blasts and blazes, tearing bodies and walls.

“Bound up!” the squad leader screamed. “Full overwatch on flanks, L.O.C scan and street level visuals!”

On darkened roads athwart them, writhing in large pools of violet blood lay what few surviving staserian remained. Inhuman wailings echoed in the pains left behind by shredded shrapnel and magmatic iron liquid.

“Down left,” one man reported, peaking yonside the site of engagement, covered at all angles by his drone.

“Down right,” another said, sprinting till he slammed behind steel columns, shaking rubbled rocks flecked in auriferous dust from nooks high above, taking aim once more at their targets.

“Jjike, Iuyjel,” came another command. “Advance to down our diehards, every scream's a problem. And Koal! L.O.C scan, now!”

Under his breath in that high-pitched voice with a snide and bantering tone, Private Koal said, “Yes sir, Mr. Ed...”

Private Jackie dashed again, across from the columns to behind a xanthous staserian jitney. Every pole and track it had once traversed were long defaced and cratered. His drone hovered near the others, confirming a state of overwatch, and as sorely ordered, Jjike and Iuyjel broke cover to the carnage.

All there was to give them greetings were screaming rodent creatures and grievous wounds caked in powdered concrete. Half of the enemy group were unarmed; helpless ab initio.

The two gave no hesitations in their imparting of what little mercy there was to give. For many of the staserian, large, green-eyed, armor-clad, ant-like insects standing atop them with jittery antennae would be their final sight. The insectoid soldiers skittered all around, shooting the survivors in their heads.

“Scan's clear, Squadlead,” said Koal. “Nothing's near to us on this platform. Besides what we've got here and recon tank unit F...D8–0, we're alone for a good ways. But it does look like there's a few stragglers five tiers up and seven over. The one past all the jagged sparkly shit at three o' clock. Most likely civies, and they should run into GV5–2 for capture.”

“Son of a bitch,” Edith scoffed. “There should be a sign of him, some-damn-where. Run another in a wider area.”

“Ed... it's been nearly two days,” Jackie said, butting in where he wasn't needed, as was his wont. “We would have found him by now if there was someone still to find. Face it, Snowball got thawed. Shit happens.”

Dark blue eyes behind her helmet's tinted visor and her suit's protective glass-like face shield narrowed. Edith was almost at a loss for words as she stared at Jackie; he was precisely the insufferable idiot his voice implied.

“Not his armor or his drone reported a flat-line,” she explained as simply as she could. “All it did was freeze. Without a corpse or blood where he landed he won't be regarded as dead until a KIA is fully confirmed.”

“From where I'm standing, he came down with a pretty bad case of the DUSTWUNs. No one can keep up with bodies in war... Look,” Jackie grumbled with growing annoyance. “Every S.R.L.S can detect anything, from a robot to toxic clots of bird shit. Anything and everything! Everything except that goddam ghost... And lets see...” Jackie shouldered his rifle and continued by counting people on his fingers. “It fucked up Keith, it fucked up Terry, it fucked up Hike, and it fucked up Al! If he somehow survived that Olympic nose-dive it means that whatever knocked his ass down survived too; 'cuz we didn't find that either. You saw as well as we did what it had done to the others, so scratch 'em off your list, jot his name down in the fucking-dead book and do whatever you need to do to understa-”

Edith cut off the soldier's rambling. “Oh!? Well then... Your speculations are noted, Private, and this is an order: Close your cock-sucker until you get a customer... Koal!” she ordered, shouting to another soldier. “Call a drop. Get everything refueled and rearmed. We need to get off of this tier before another fuckin' stray helicoid takes a pass at us.”

“Yes, Eddy, understood,” mumbled Koal.

The tan and chitinous corilu twins, Jjike and Iuyjel, concluded sweeping up the survivors. When the all-clear was given they went skittering back to the humans, purposefully walking through whatever rubble they could to mar their armor with spots, just so they could pass time cleaning their suits later on; to occupy them for the anticipated stretches of boredom to come.

With an unusual trepidation, Iuyjel butted her head against Jjike's so that the protective areas around their antennae were touching, passing brainwaves across bio-electric currents.

“Staserian look very much like humans, do they not?” Iuyjel projected to her brother.

“Indeed?” Jjike replied, adding, “Have you noticed the shapes of their mandibles, os frontales and auricles? Tell me, do they seem as ugly as well?”

“What but a similar race could be as ugly as humans?” Iuyjel replied.

“Cut the goddamn thunder!” Edith ordered. She could not stand to hear them converse. To human ears, corilu speech came as naught but clicking, like an idle stun-gun or an irksome noise akin to radio static.

Cor To Hum, Iuyjel thought. The detector around her small head picked up the brainwave command and sent it straight to her drone. It hummed and beeped softly before speaking the received signals.

“Apologies, Dragoon, but are we so loud?” the machine asked with a simulated unisex voice, translating Iuyjel's thoughts.

“Hushed noise is noise all the same,” Edith said. “Solidify this position and sit tight for the drop.”

And with that, she walked away from her squad, believably pretending to speak with Command. It fooled them all, save for Djhuen, who kept her in his sights.

Edith simply no longer wanted to be around them, not to see nor to hear them. Quite frankly, she always had issues tolerating her fellow soldiers, but her squad had two exceptions, one of which was missing.

Where are you, Al? Edith wondered.

She moved on and on, down the streets and alleyways, beyond the corpses and the rubble. She passed their previous victims and navigated through holes they'd knocked in the walls. Soon enough, Edith stood at the edge of the tier, faced with the city's ill-assorted, spellbinding nature. All to hear were sounds of bombs... and the hums of the wind. Massive skyscrapers incapable of touching the clouds filled her view, all maculated with the makings of war.

Thinking of those she'd killed brought no sadness, but what did were her thoughts of a single man. One she couldn't save. Every thought she had of him made her smile somehow, all except when he was last seen: Falling as he flailed at a creature clawing at his head, descending into the city's darkness.

With him fell Edith's faith in Sol technology. Their eyes showed them what their scanners failed to acknowledge. The enemy, the creature, the thing that stole him away after killing three others. Nothing could track it, not even by motion. They never saw it coming, and could do nothing when it left but remember its deep, red eyes. Like a ghost to the scanners, it came from nowhere, and left much the same.

Your drone broke, Edith hoped, You're just out of contact. Maybe it captured you... or better yet, you stole the scan-blocker it has and are sneaking behind the lines. You're not dead...

“Dragoon,” Koal said into his radio, “The ship's here... but it's damn sure not the one you'd want. Pilot says we're scheduled for a briefing Arche-side. Command confirms it, so we're outta here for a while.”

“Fuck... Rodger that,” Edith begrudgingly complied. She didn't want to go back. Somewhere deep down she knew Alreno was alive, waiting for her to find him; but she was only half right.

Edith gathered herself and hurried to her squad, compiling one plan after another. She wanted little more than to convince a commanding officer to green-light a search for Alreno. Plus, new additions to the unit would be mandatory.

Their most grievous encounter left what was once a ten-man squad as only Koal, Jackie, Jjike, Djhuen, Iuyjel, and herself. Edith constantly forgot that Djhuen was even there, but without Alreno, he became her new favorite soldier. He always stayed far behind, relying on his sniper while his drone did the assault work. His focus, tactical advice and competence were unmatched. Djhuen could manually control his assault drone and snipe at optimum efficiency at the same time with unparalleled reactions. She and others had joked that he was a squad all his own, and was suspiciously low-ranking for what he could do and what he knew.

Edith had never been a fan of non-humans, not even the Sol's primary allies and especially not the creepy corilu bugs. However, Djhuen had a cool reserve and a clear mindset that revolved around war and the waging thereof. Nobody tried, did, or even could correct the little insect on any of his actions, as he was also the only experienced soldier they had. Though none of them knew it.

For Edith and the others, this was their first combat deployment, but it was Djhuen's eighty-eighth in a career spanning over a century and across twenty-six other conflicts.

He was a combat veteran nearly ninety times over, and would have been drafted back into service when the war started, had Djhuen not called first. He had jumped at the chance to engage a new species, but had since regretted it.

Monkeys... Djhuen thought as he came down from his sniping position, joining everyone else at the transport vessel that had come for them. He was a quiet bug, partially dwarfed and shorter than other corilu, making him just a little larger than a Saint Bernard. The others in the squad, except for Edith and himself, had already gotten into the transport. She was on her way back, but Djhuen remained reluctant to enter.

Ever since he begun his tour of surface warfare, Djhuen had sensed misgivings at every turn; the sort of bad feelings with causes constantly rearing. There was something strange about their enemies. He thought that simply because staserian were close to humans, warring against them would be similar. How wrong he was, though. He'd never seen an enemy be so careless with radiation weapons nor a populous so unprepared.

Without a care for protecting anyone in particular he keenly watched the windows and rooftops around them, as having come in contact with an undetectable creature had put him on his highest level of awareness. The alien that stunted their squad was a kind all its own, and Djhuen could tell that the mazes of the city still held secrets none were yet privy to. Even given all the military technologies and Sol casualties the staserian had, the civilians themselves seemed somehow... primitive.

“You gonna get in, or what?” Koal asked him.

Is there a shape human stupidity shan’t select? Djhuen wondered. Questions filled his head, extrospective musings of humanity and its inherent faults. Why are Earth's children nescient of things they've been taught? Djhuen thought it, but he'd not dare to let his drone translate out of fear for having to engage the anthropoids in inutile conversation.

“Hey!” From the front of the ship, the pilot bellowed to the back with a deep and booming voice, “Where the hell's Al?”

“Dead as the dark age's dykes,” Jackie answered.

“He means missing,” Edith walked up to the ship and said, “He fell, but we never found the body, and it's impossible for him to have landed anywhere other than where we looked... So he's got to be on the move somewhere.”

“...I'm... sure he'll turn up,” the pilot lied, shaking his head and scratching his scalp, knocking his dreadlocks around. “You look like shit, Ed.”

“Good to know,” she grumbled.

“You're a pilot,” Koal stated abrasively, catching practically everyone off guard.

“Oh? No shit?” Fendon spun his head around, oozing with sarcasm, nearly unable to believe what he'd just heard. “That changes a whole lot... Here I was under the impression that all I had to do was keep the seat warm.”

“What I mean is... how do you know Al?” Koal asked.

“Why? What did he tell you?” Fendon asked defensively.

“Nothing...” said Koal, “I just didn't know he new any pilots... and you've got the same hair as him.”

“Glad you like it,” Fendon threw his head back, blinking quickly and stroking his head gracefully as he tried to end the conversation. “Al showed me how to do it, but I think I prefer pigtails... now be quiet. Is this everyone who's alive and present?”

“Djhuen, com'on!” Edith called out.

He took slow steps backwards, hesitantly obeying her. The old sniper kept his eyes on the rooftops. All too many times had he seen missiles strike transports as passengers entered them, and in his opinion, one capable soldier and an automated defense drone should always be left behind to protect the ship when it was most susceptible to an attack; military intelligence, however, was doomed to forever be an oxymoron – and capable soldiers were few and far between.

Edith punched the door controls as soon as Djhuen was aboard with everyone else, and with a hiss and a clank the locks tightly sealed them within the ship. A strip of yellow lights above their chairs dimmed, giving the metal's blue a more orange tint. Fendon had powered up the engines and set navigations with the brainwave-operated circlet over his head to control the ship's systems. Slowly, they lifted away.

With a grunt, Edith threw her helmet off after accidentally sneezing into it. “Fendon,” she called to him, wiping her face and walking up the small stairs from the seats alow and into the back of the cockpit.

“What?” asked the pilot. His attention was divided between not diving into a tier and trying to speak with her.

“I called for a rearm drop, not a pick up. Who ordered this?” she asked.

“A captain, or someone special. I dunno.”

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

“Don't fuckin' bullshit me, Fen,” Edith grumbled. “Tell me...” She knew why he was lying, so she turned off the camera of the helmet in her hand. Fendon raised an eyebrow, looked past her shoulder to see if any of the others were eavesdropping or looking their way. When he was absolutely sure he'd be safe, Fendon beckoned for Edith to step closer. She leaned towards him.

“There's a classified file about this squad now,” Fendon explained in a whisper. “You reported an attack from a new kind of alien, and somebody got really, really interested when they heard it couldn't be scanned. Didn't mention Al's demise in the docs. That's all I had time to find out... Now, sit your brawny, ginger ass down and stop asking me shit I shouldn't know.”

Edith didn't say another word to him. The pilot was rude, and he was a thieving bastard, but for the most part, so was Alreno. He and Fendon had their share of dismal fun at the Sol's expense during the months the fleet approached the planet, stealing things and getting into places they didn't belong. She hated that solitudinarians got along so well with other solitudinarians, but no one else.

Edith had been so caught up in killing the staserian on the streets and in her search for Alreno that she had not bothered to consider what attacked them, or how serious of a problem a real scanner-ghost posed to the field and to the Sol.

She sat down with the rest of the squad in the back of the ship, feeling uneasy of things to come. Few officers would pull an entire squad from the surface without telling them why, and for all she knew, Fendon hadn't told her everything he had learned.

Their transport was taking them to the commanding headquarters, the base where all of the ground soldiers came and where all of the military leadership resided, a massive ship known as the Archetype Engine. Edith looked out of the thick, reinforced window and stared at the massive ship looming in and above the gray clouds.

It was by far the largest human vessel ever constructed, rivaling the size of small moons; but dense enough to keep gravity from tearing it apart. Smaller attack ships swarmed around it like an insect hive, scurrying from surface to orbit, all carrying out different tasks on different parts of the planet.

“SCL–8 incoming on dock 6562,” Fendon said into the communications system, “Confirm permission.”

“SCL–8,” an operator replied, “you have standing imprimaturs to dock, and the security detail is currently awaiting your cargo's arrival. Proceed with compliance to quarantine protocol.”

“Understood, SCL–8 inbound. Listen everyone,” Fendon said to Edith and her squad, “quarantine protocol changed a few days ago 'cause a khamosa medibird caught some kinda kidney infection. Give the hazmat team all the water and food you've got.”

They set all of their canteens, bottles, ration packs, and sealed pods of nectar down on the floor in an assorted pile. It rattled around as they drew closer to the Archetype Engine and fell within its gravity. Their transport slowly flew them in and with a loud metallic slam the docking clamps took hold. Behind his ship the airlock shut and the docking bay began to pressurize.

“Thank you for flying AirFendon, the non-profit transportation service in your local area... Any donation of booze or womanly pleasure is greatly appreciated and will be put to a worthy cause. Be sure to leave any and all liquors and lulus upfront wit'ya humble aviator...”

“Fendon, open the fuckin' door...” Edith groaned.

“My complements to that stern ice-bitchery of yours. As far as you need to know, we gotta wait for the lights,” he explained. “Deep-scan, which is also part of new protocol. They decide when all the doors open now.”

“Ice bitch? Either I'm humorless or your idea of 'funny' just fuckin' sucks.” Edith said.

“Vae tibi, stultissima... res ipsa loquitur,” Fendon replied. “Scan clear. Opening in ten seconds.”

A small, red light flashed above the pilot's monitor, and in moments the doors hissed and opened. They shielded their eyes from the docking bay's bright-white lights breaking through to them.

“Scram,” Fendon said. “I got others on their way.”

After they gathered their food and water RB1–3 left the ship in single file down long, grated metal ramps where three men awaited them. They wore large purple hazmat space suits, holding bins marked 'BioHazard' in seven different languages.

“Is that all of the consumable materials you've brought back?” asked a hazmat worker with his voice muffled behind the suit.

“Yeah,” Edith said.

“Good,” he told her, “Dump it and take your squad to the medical decontamination room at the end of this hall. It's the only unlocked door.”

“My favorite part...” Koal sarcastically groaned.

“Quit 'ya bitchin',” Jackie said.

They walked down the bright hallway, still armed with their rifles, and with their drones following each of them. Aboard the A.E, however, all deployment drones become defaulted, and the soldiers lose the majority of their control. Defaulting the drones was a measure to ensure that somebody who happened to get a 'mild case' of shellshock wouldn't start thinking the wrong thoughts and shooting thermite rounds all over the ship. Their guns were all inoperable whilst aboard the A.E as well.

They entered the decontamination chamber through pristine silver doors, both so polished they appeared as mirrors. All of their drones either hovered or rolled away from the squad and automatically latched themselves into an armament receiver, and beside those were empty lockers and other containers.

An intercom clicked on and a voice hoarsely squalled and echoed through the room.

“Plaaace all riiifleees in weapon looockers!” it said, rolling the sounds of every R and L into any vowels that followed them.

“Ugh... I bet anyone who teaches a khamosa to whisper will get rewarded their own planet,” Koal said.

“Heard that! Asshole!” the voice replied. “Disarrrm!

They all complied, and when the last of their weapons and grenades were secured, the doors on the far side of the room whisked open, and in stepped the medical inspector who'd been assigned to see them. He towered over the squad of apes and insects, standing a little over twelve feet tall and looking down at them with four beady black eyes. He was a large avian, vulture-esque with jet-black feathers; a khamosa.

Each group he'd seen had been more pathetic than the last, and RB1–3 was no different. They looked haggard from combat and stressed with the loss of squad members. He strode up to them taking stork-like steps, bobbing his head back and forth and staring down his beak. He spread his enormous wings before them, revealing an entire medical scanning system.

“Stand!” cawed the colossal bird.

They crowded around him, forming a semicircle and letting the scanners do their jobs. The inspector took note of their postures, number of coughs and breaths per minute – with respect to human and corilu health standards before concluding their conditions.

“Riiight!” he cawed, “Suits off! Body underrr suits onllly! Despite the dirrrt and blooood, you are all cleeeeean!”

“Where do we put our armor?” asked Jackie.

“Floooor!” The inspector squalled while using the hand-like extremities at the end of his wing-bones to reset his scanners.

“And where do we go after that?” asked Koal.

“Bwaaa! Idiot! Twooo! Two doors!” The inspector quickly became irate, and managed to raise his already high-volume voice. “Leeeeave the way you didn't enter! Liittleee-braaained jat!”

“Jat?” Koal asked.

“It's a primate from Sagansia,” Edith said, “He's pretty much just calling you a monkey.”

“Get... OUT! More on way! Piss off!” It seemed impossible, but the medical inspector managed to yell at them even louder. He'd seen better days as well, it seemed.

They all rushed out like a pack of frightened mice, flinching as the door shut and locked behind them. Left alone in the hall wearing nothing but tight, cotton-white untersuits that revealed much more than they would have liked, they were greeted with silence. Black detection rings built over the fabric separated their necks from their torsos, their torsos from their arms and legs and their fingers and toes from their hands and feet to regulate blood flow and monitor pulse and respiration. They were among the most uncomfortable of things to wear; and worst of all, they were mandatory.

The squad all wanted to get a change of clothes, but they only made it a few steps before a detail approached them.

“You RB1–3?” asked the chief security officer. He was a gruff-looking man, his skin pocked with freckles, dark-red dots and brown blemishes.

“Yes,” Edith said as all the others nodded their heads.

“Right...” The chief grumbled and looked at the list on the display screen of his drone. “I need Edith, Jjike, Iuyjel and Djhuen to come with me.”

“...What about Koal and Jackie?” Edith asked.

“Yeah,” Jackie chimed in, “What about us?”

The security chief looked them up and down and bluntly said, “I've been working for thirty hours straight without any stimulants, and I'm in no mood to question orders or ask for any more of them. Try to believe me when I say that I couldn't give any less of a fuck where you go... Now if I mentioned your name, follow me.”

Edith and the three corilu followed the security officer down several large concourses and elevators, and they all got the same relieved feeling. Something told them that they would never see or have to work with Koal and Jackie ever again. They were right.

Edith, Jjike and Iuyjel were escorted to the last door that they would have expected, and the last door Djhuen wanted to see. Deck fifty-three, section four. The Admiral's tactical front.

“They're waiting for you,” the chief said.

He opened the door for them and walked away. The room was large and mostly empty, nowhere near as grand as the rumors circulating amongst the soldiers had suggested. There was a single display table in the middle of the room with a complex, but incomplete holographic map of the staserian city. Other than that, there were no chairs and no desks. The only other person in the room wasn't even an admiral, but a captain.

“At ease,” he said, “I'd offer you seats, but the Grand Admiral hates all forms of comfort among low-ranks. Any of you know why you're here?”

“The scanner-ghost,” Edith said.

“Yes,” the captain replied, “an alien now known to be present on the planet, but not consanguineal to the staserian... and there's the matter of Private Alreno, of course.”

“We still haven't found him, sir. The rest of my squad are KIA, he's our only MIA, sir,” Edith said.

“It's obvious that you want to search for him. I've been forced to watch all of the footage from your drone's camera's,” the captain told her. “Alreno is a particular point of interest for you, I've noticed, so you'll be glad to know that he's your new objective.”

What Edith wanted to do and what she was always ordered to do had never quite matched up. She was ecstatic to hear it, but the captain was keeping a few choice details to himself.

“Before I forget to tell you,” he said, “I'm Captain Morteamire Mortalus, and I'm in command of the support carrier Exemplar – right hand of Grand Admiral Roko.”

“Lt. Dragoon Edith Melcini Mulguart,” she introduced herself and added, “Why allow a search and rescue now? I asked once before, but was denied.”

“Well,” Morteamire explained, clicking his fingers against the table, “for the last few hours we've been getting broken messages that frankly didn't seem legit. They were all poorly transmitted and were dismissed as more bullshit from bored engineers, but we cleared them up and one of them seems important. Would you like to hear it?”

“By all means, yes,” she said.

The captain cleared the three dimensional map from the display table and input his security password. He then navigated the file system to a recording, where he then had to input his password a second time and remain still for an identity scan before he was able to play it.

“All of our systems tell us this is a false message,” he said, “but if there is a blocker of some kind corrupting it, your mission could save his life.”

He began the message.

“This is Private Alreno Voleavonvernoski of the Sol assault squad RB1–3. I'm unarmed, and have become the prisoner of a hostile alien life form. It is not native, and it possesses the means to block numerous methods of detection. Most communications are hindered as well. I don't know if this will reach anyone, or even where I am, but a tank and PF unit recently passed here... help me.”

The message ended.

“That's all that clearly came through, but that's pretty much all we need to bother with,” the captain said. “There are only three tank units in the general location where we think this was transmitted from. Finding him could take a long time, but shouldn't be too much of a problem since we suspect he's somewhere that's already been purged of staserian rats.”

Edith's eyes were widened with both hope and disbelief. She had never heard Alreno sound so scared before, nor had she ever heard him ask for help or use so simple a form of language at such length. It was atypical, and worrying.

“You won't lead the mission, Ms. Mulguart, but I'm putting the four of you in the squad with its undertaking.”

“What about the other two? Where are you sending Jackie Yeneen and Koal Benenci?” Edith asked.

Captain Mortalus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you really care where we unload a couple of whining earthers?” he asked. “Those dirt-dwellers passed all of their training by the narrowest margins possible.”

The door behind Edith, Jjike, Djhuen and Iuyjel opened, and suddenly, the Grand Admiral of the fleet stepped into the room. Standing with a body of two hundred and seventy pounds of pure and disturbingly toned muscle, her face was wrinkled with age and she wore a pearly-white suit decorated with three pounds of ribbons and seven pounds of medals. She was a monster, and clearly the tallest human in the room at six feet and ten inches.

Her long, oily black hair matched her black eyes, which matched her black eye shadow and lipstick; which matched her black nail polish, black boots, and a black tattoo of a winged eye on her forehead.

“Got the pissants marching in line?” asked the Grand Admiral. She addressed the captain and didn't bother to even look at Edith or the others.

“Indeed I do,” Captain Mortalus casually said.

“Good, scram.” She waved them all away.

Edith met eyes with Roko as she was walking out, and felt a shudder run down her spine. Roko's stare seemed wide and pretty; of Martian-Asian descent, but sociopathic, cold and empty - a gaze beholden of war heroes yet to die.

As Edith and the others reached the door, however, Roko tauntingly and almost playfully said, “No, no, no... You should be so lucky. Not you, little June-bug... stay a while.”

The doors closed and locked with a creaking, metallic noise, leaving Edith, Jjike and Iuyjel on one side, and Captain Mortalus, Grand Admiral Roko and 'Private' Djhuen on the other.

Roko had a sudden urge to pet the little bug, but she knew how much he hated to be touched, especially by her. After she nodded at the captain, Mortalus reached into one of his pockets and threw Djhuen a small translator. He caught it with his front legs, and after some fiddling he attached the small device to one of his antennae, lighting it up with electricity.

“Such shit from you seldom spuriously spews,” said the translator's mechanized voice. “What do you want you bothersome, belliferous, boisterous, barbigerous, body-building, ball-busting, bitch of a bathykolpian buffarilla?” There was a stark, facinorous lack of remorse in his eyes; but not one that a human could notice.

“Good to see you too, Djhuen,” she replied. “Are you enjoying the war so far? Haven't lost too many of those good friends of yours yet, have you?”

Djhuen's head dipped down slightly in the corilu equivalent of a squinting glare.

“Aww... I've missed you, too.” Her tone oozed with sarcasm as she gave him a few pats on the head to be annoying on purpose. Just like she had expected – and hoped – he batted and scratched her hand off of him like a cricket with an itch.

“No patience for an old friend? No undue respect for a CO? Here I was assuming that you'd changed for the worse, but alright, be that way... Simply put, I want you back, because I need something dealt with.”

“Well oh gee-golly, gosh, gooseberries and fiddlesticks... Your woes and worries concern me as deeply as always, don't they?” Djhuen's translator slowly asked. “I resigned from you and yours years ago, remember? Have you ever asked for me to do anything legal on your behalf, or for my own benefit? 'No' should be the answer to that, and trusting you'll stay in the spirit of brevity, I will ask a final time before cutting all concern for the matter... what do you want, Ulumia?”

“You're impossible to talk to,” the Admiral grumbled. “I'll sum it up before you get too irate. I wouldn't want you to accidentally shed in here, after all. To be clear, I don't trust... uh...”

Admiral Roko looked towards Captain Mortalus.

“Her name is Edith Mulguart,” he said.

“Yeah, her. She's set on saving her sorry-ass army crush, which is why she's only in the new squad, and not leading the damn thing. That, and we don't need too many new people finding out about this. She'll fight to find it, but if left unsupervised she might incinerate the target. Basically, Djhuen, you'll be in the squad, but your orders will come from me, and any other commands that conflict with them are to be completely ignored. You, either alone or with SER–22 will locate, obtain and secure the alien causing the scanner anomaly. Make sure you leave it intact; I couldn't give a shit if it's alive or not when you throw it on my table, just don't give me a combusted corpse. It has to be in a suitable condition for study with all its possessions operational.”

Grand Admiral Roko crossed her arms and looked down at him intently. “Can you do that?” she asked, “Or do I have to play resolution roulette with that freckle-faced fuckwit?”

“Will I be allowed access to any weapon for use with sorting your problem?” Djhuen asked.

“You can have anything short of a nuke,” Roko replied with a wave of her hand, “just find the alien and break a setaceous foot off in its ass. And June-bug... this is an executive priority mission. Reports of this are filtered through me... you can kill anything down there that gets in the way. Is that clear?”

Djhuen nodded, turned away and left the room. He knew that “anything” was really “anyone.”

As soon as the little corilu sniper was gone, Captain Mortalus turned to Admiral Roko.

“Why are you so keen on him?” he asked.

“Have you ever tried to make small talk with his stupid fucking race?” Roko asked in her signature tone of political incorrectness.

Mortalus cleared his throat and said, “Yes, infuriating.”

Roko went on, however. “I love corilu, and not in an insectophilic way,” she said, “but I like how they think, the way their brains just... naturally operate. Questions, questions. Always questions. Corilu rarely make statements. They ask, and get answers only in questions. 'How do you... blank? Where did you learn this? How was it tested, and when?'”

“Sounds pointless to me,” Mortalus said. “And besides, wasn't that one making statements? Crass ones, I might add.”

“Sort of,” Roko explained. “he's different... and though bitter, also better. A mantis among mites if ever there was one. Usually his statements are masked in questions, but like I said, he's different. He's known us long enough to speak as we do. That som'bitch is nearly two hundred. Generally, though, a corilu's nature is investigation. They look, they think, they ask, they try, and then they ask again. Humans can't do that without lots of time and a rigid scientific process. And even then not for very long with any consistency. Neither can khamosa. None of the low-tech trash races can do it, either. It's annoying to us, rouses hatred and contempt. 'Why? Why? Why? Why?' Human adults don't do that. We can't investigate without making statements, without saying what we know is right from the start. That's why they're better than us...”

“Better? They're better?” Mortalus asked with indignation. “If that were the case, why are humans the active line of Sol defense? Why do humans hold the major monopolies? Why do humans have higher populations? Why are we more powerful in both trade and military?”

Roko gave a hard, egotistically derisive laugh. “You're starting to sound like one, but to answer your questions... just look at their history. Humans knew about evolution a little under four hundred years before any corilu discovered it... but they were in space before Archimedes could count his toes. Now, before I forget... Go find Sinclare...”