Atea, owing to its size, has a baker’s dozen of “barracks” - most of them Turai, one the mostly theoretical staging grounds for the Interceptor wings, one that bases whatever unit of Bashakra’i ops teams passing through on the way to their next location - and then there’s the one Bello told Hugh about, down near the endcap of an industrial sector. You could go for a half-hour jog through the place without running into people - it’s all factory robotics and automated logistic systems as well as masses of bulk storage. The last stop for the tram drops Hugh off still more than half a mile from where he needs to go. In short, the perfect assembly point for a little “need to know” side mission.

Hugh’s tried to dress up low-profile for this, but the two jet-black equipment hardcases following him on an automated trolley make that point kind of moot. Black is the watchword - with nobody around to see him, Hugh ditches his brown coat and walks the rest of the way in what he’ll be wearing for the drop: boots, 5.11 pants and a tight fleece jacket over his t-shirt, all in a dark shade. The load-bearing gear and holster assembly (as well as gloves and balaclava) are still in the case, because a) there’s no need to put those on yet and b) these are not articles of clothing you want to get sweaty in.

When he makes his way into a darkened storage unit, Bello whistles for him and leads Hugh through a few more doors, none of which even look like they’re powered up until Bello sends an unlock code from his vox. The trolley gamely navigates the narrow corridors behind the two, until finally the last door opens into what looks like it could have once been a small hab shelter for Atea’s construction workers. The handful of people already present look up from their own gear to give Bello and Hugh a nod; Hugh makes most of them as Bashakra’i, but one or two, he’s not so sure about - they skew a little older than your usual rebel. Hugh’s not sure if that makes him the youngest guy in the room - and thereby “the dumb boot” - so he eases his mind a little by rubbing the handcrafted leather wristband on his right arm, a little present from Rhea.

Bello walks up to the front of the room and stands behind the already lit holodisplay. "The call has come in. Our cell at the Grincanne spaceport has confirmed that this is our target." He waves his hand to the left, and an image of a bloated grey spaceship, obviously taken from an odd angle and with great haste, slides into view. Hugh is comforted by confirmation that intel photographs still suck even when the resolution is measured in gigapixels. "No name, just goes by the chassis ID, so our target is the Harumdor Plawaan #Y-324D21. Infil and exfil will be through the cargo airlock situated here, at the rear starboard side." A circle of his finger highlights the airlock in orange. "You'll be approaching in a stolen Imperial Turai Manta, and posing as a random boarding inspection, searching for smuggled rebels." A chuckle goes around the room at that. "We believe that the cages are in the sections here and here -" more finger circles highlight the bloated saddle areas on either side of the ship's centerline in green, "- and so once the airlock opens, move in hard and fast to clear and dominate these areas. Manethna will be on the ship's systems and will try to keep them from venting the holds, but just in case, keep your emergency air with you at all times." Another wave of his hand, and the static image of the ship is replaced by a hastily-assembled 3D animation. "Exfil will be the dicy part. There's not enough space in a Manta for your team and the Wherren, so we will have a second ship, a freighter, sitting dark just out of sensor range. Once you've entered the ship, the Manta will send the signal for the freighter to approach. You will have to hold position for 10 minutes before the freighter can arrive and dock. If all goes well, they will realize the position they are in and simply leave you alone, wait for you to exfil, and then both of you will be on your merry way. If not, hold them off until exfil - or take control of the ship, if you have to. As an absolute last resort, the Manta will stay docked until the freighter is ready to move into position, fall back to the Manta and disengage."

Bello steps through the holo and looks over the assembled team. "Any questions?"
Hugh raises his hand. “How many hostiles on the ship, and how many are directly in our way? Any guesses?”
"The slavers seem to be working in two groups, or are two separate groups," Bello replies. "So all our agents on Grincanne could see was the small loading crew of two. Judging by the size of the ship, expect at least eight more."
“And the Kansat?” a woman with a big fuck-off Kauka scar on her face asks. “Wouldn’t be the first slavers getting a couple of trins for backup.” The others look to her when she speaks, then back to Bello when she’s done.
"Our slaver friends have been so kind as to file for passage through the outsystem gateway," Bello answers. "It will take local Kansat at least two hours to respond from our planned intercept point."
Hugh raises his hand one more time. “Do we need anyone alive for questioning?” he asks. The Or can we just kill all those fuckers? is left implied.
"The point of this mission is to send the message that the Bashakra'i and our allies will not tolerate preying on innocent Wherren," Bello replies. "So, no." Similarly, Bello's implication of Go ahead and paint the walls with their blood is left unsaid.
Hugh nods and rubs the leather wristband one more time. Only one thing is sure now: those slavers are going to have a very bad day.
"Any other questions?" Bello asks. "No? Good. Prepare your equipment, and I will see you off at the dock." He nods towards the scarred woman, then walks past the group towards the door as they break for their individual lockers.

Hugh swiftly sets to unpacking his own gear. The light plate carrier goes over his t-shirt - it’s enough to cover center mass from the front and back, but not much more, a necessary tradeoff for staying mobile in the cramped confines of the ship. With that, Hugh immediately sticks out of the sea of field-stripped and redecorated Turai carapaces. The looks he drew with that swiftly move on to his trusty XM10, which gives off a soft whine as Hugh powers it up for a function check. But Hugh’s not quite trusting this to the fancy space gun, no matter how many hours he’s put in with it - he also straps an underbarrel shotgun onto the rifle, checking the four-shot magazine before easing it home with a satisfying click. HK45 sidearm in a drop holster, check. Straight-edged tanto-style tactical knife, check. “Quiver” with spare XM10 rods, check. Bandoleer of four flash/bang grenades attached to the quiver strap, check. Finally, he fills up the magazine pouches on his load-bearing equipment, leaving the last one free for his emergency air bottle. Hugh twists at the hips, swinging the gear around a bit, then jumps up and down a few more times, adjusting straps and links until he’s got the rattle out of his setup. With a satisfied smile, he drops his remaining odds and ends back into the gear case and locks it, then follows the other Bashakra’i to the Manta airlock.

Most seem to be sporting beam rifles, with stingers holstered for backup amidst a veritable sea of edged combat implements. The woman who spoke up in the briefing seems to be carrying a finely-made slugthrower - not quite as high-end as the customized hunting weapons Angel requisitioned, but it’s clear that the Imperium’s copies of Earth weapons have come into their own, and it’s good to know that someone on the team will be there to throw some lead around. Hugh’s eyes scan what little skin she’s showing; judging by the bright eyes, she might be a little younger than him, but she clearly makes up for it in raw milage. A particularly nasty Kauka scar runs down from her left cheek all the all over the side of her neck before disappearing beneath her collar and reappearing as a furious little pattern of skin blotches on her hand. Hugh doesn’t want to imagine what smashed into her there, but that she’s still alive is improbable - and that she’s still willing to get into a firefight is commendable. The bigger surprise, however, is that the woman also sports a leather wristband wrapped over her scars, albeit one that has clearly seen years of wear and tear. As the others finish gearing up, they walk past her, and she scans everyone before motioning them towards the airlock. Hugh’s questioning look is met with a silent nod. Looks like he’s not the only one here with a very personal reason.

---

Three hours into the twelve hour flight between Atea and the system gateway, Hugh has exhausted both the meager reading material on his vox - forgot the library sync, again - and what little room there is to wander around in the Manta. It’s not like the crasher benches are super-tiny, but with a total of 16 people and their weaponry, any kind of movement necessarily means Hugh has to squeeze past someone, and that tends to discourage moving more than necessary. His looks toward the scarred woman have become more frequent, and finally she catches one of his staring phases, rolls her eyes and waves him over.

“Do you want something?” she asks, fixing Hugh with a tired - but sharp-eyed - look.
Hugh stands tall as she sizes him up. “You’re about 30% Kauka tissue and you’ve got a Wherren band on your wrist,” Hugh says. “I’m sorry for staring, but I just have to ask how you got those two.”
“Got hit by a piece of Manta for this,” she says, indicating the enormous scar. “I was too close to it. And this -” she points to the band on her wrist, “- is a gift from a good friend.”
One of the youngest Turai laughs at that. “Biria’s being modest. I heard she was standing on it when she hit it with a spearbomb.”
“Not quite,” the woman - Biria, apparently - grunts.
“Damn,” Hugh says. “Biria, is it? Good to be on your team - sure wouldn’t want to be the other guys. Do you want me anywhere in particular when we go in?”
“In your spot in the order, covering your sector,” Biria replies. She looks back up at Hugh. “Not that I don’t appreciate having a soldier like you along for this ride, Verrill? But this is a strike team, so...just keep it clean, yeah?”
Hugh nods. “Your show, your rules, Biria,” he says. “Well, that’s my questions answered. Anything you care to hear?”
Biria shakes her head as she leans back. “Oh, I’ve already heard of your adventures with the 815 from the newbies,” she says, and smirks. “Something about you crash landing a Manta on the Emperor’s pet Narsai’i?”
Hugh winces. “That was the second time I killed him,” he replies. “First one was a full magazine, didn’t take. And in hindsight, it would have been smarter not to be in the Manta before we smashed it into the side of the tower.”
“But if you were interested in the smarter thing, you wouldn’t be there at all,” Biria says, adding the unstated second line.
“Well, if you can’t do something smart, do something right,” Hugh says. “Sums us up pretty well, I think.”
Biria nods. "Yep." She leans back as much as she can and slides her hood over her eyes, indicating that she'd prefer to be sleeping rather than talking now.
“Good talk,” Hugh says. “Catch you later.” He climbs back to his own crasher, and with his XM-10 clutched tight, he settles in for some sleep of his own.

---

15 hours later, the mood in the Manta is very different.
“Freighter D21, maintain your position and power down your engines,” the co-pilot says, his communications with the slavers’ ship plainly audible from down below. “We’ve been ordered to board and inspect your cargo for any rebel or terrorist stowaways.”
Down in the hold with Hugh and the rest of the strike team, everyone’s strapped into their crashers in case things get hairy, but the tension is already about as high as can be. Let’s see how dumb they are, Hugh thinks.
“Yer not gonna fuck with our business, are yer?” a rough voice replies over the vox.
“No, sir, your license papers for the Wherren slaves check out,” the co-pilot replies. “Just looking for humans that aren’t supposed to be there.”
“Well then, come on in,” the voice chuckles. “Powering down engines.”
“Thank you, this will be over in just a few minutes.” There’s a pause. “You dumb fuck.”

The Manta surges forward, and a few minutes later, a brief flurry of activity on the ship-to-ship vox runs through the docking procedure, until with a clank, a few bangs, and a loud hiss, the ships are docked together and the airlocks are sealed. “Thank you, Freighter D21, our quad will be boarding shortly.” Another pause, and the co-pilot sticks his head down into the hold. “They’re all yours.”
“All right! Everyone up!” Biria shouts as she stands up. “Trins 1 and 2, you go left and secure the opposite hold, trins 3 and 4, you stay on this side, secure this hold and give Manethna the cover he needs to keep them from blasting us all into hard vacuum! Any questions?”
“No, Samal!” the other rebels shout.
“Good!” Biria replies. “Line up and get ready! We breach on my call!”
The rebels all jostle and walk towards the back of the Manta, already in formation. Hugh’s place is towards the front of the formation, right behind the lead Rav-Turai in his trin - Trin 3. Biria is right up front, leading Trin 1. The whole quad seems like it’s holding its breath as Biria queues up the freighter’s inner airlock cycle.

----

In the hold of Freighter D21, Yarmhrr presses his hands up against the cage wall, as his bondmate Jorumm does the same in her adjoining cell. The ship is dimly lit, and the cold dark brown metal floor is stained with blood and who knows what else. It smells of grease, smoke, dirty Wherren and fear in the hold as he tries and fails to look at his bondmate through the cage wall. ”I’m so sorry,” he signs pitifully, his fur black with shame.
”It’s not your fault,” she signs back for the dozenth time. ”You were trying to save our cubs.” Jorumm rubs her snout up against the thick wire mesh separating them. ”It was the right thing to do.”

His bondmate’s kind words do nothing to assuage Yarmhrr’s guilt. When he first heard of the liberation of Whiirr and that the Narsai’i were accepting all Wherren who came, Yarmhrr couldn’t hide his green colors. But with Jorumm’s role as one of their little shantytown’s protectors, keeping the Imperial thugs and bullies from coming in to terrorize innocent cubs or knock over houses, even the relatively generous amount Yarmhrr’s employers would allow him - his cubs ate fresh food once a week, practically a luxury - would never see his family safely off of Tarpana. It was only a spontaneous offer from the kind family he sometimes cooked in the fast food establishment of that saw him with the cash to pay one of the smugglers that offered his services. When Yarmhrr and Jorumm arrived with Nogui, Boros, and Cahg - younger than three years old - they were quickly herded into a container to “hide them from Turai scans” - but the container was then filled with some kind of poison that knocked them all out, and when they came to, they were in these accursed cages, and Yarmhrr instantly knew that he had lead his family into the hands of slavers.

”Mama!” Boros cries from the cage that she has been put with a dozen other cubs, a few cages down from Yarmhrr and Jorumm. ”Where are you? Where is Nogui?”
”She’s right here!” Jorumm barks in return. In reality, neither Yarmhrr nor Jorumm have seen or heard their second daughter yet. ”Everything will be fine, just...just be strong for me!”
”I’m afraid!” Cahg howls over the cries and whines of the other cubs in the cage.
”I know, darling,” Jorumm replies. ”Mother and father are right here, okay?”

“Shut the fuck up!” one of the humans shouts as a group of them walk past, and jabs a stun stick into Jorumm’s cage, sending a blast of electricity up her back. Her fur stands on end and explodes in a burst of color, before she collapses back to the floor of the cage. “Fucking beasts.”
Yarmhrr flies across his cage in an instant, his fur ablaze with red, orange and yellow. He might not be as strong as his bondmate, but if this blasted cage wasn’t in the way, the human would be finding out what that stun stick tastes like. Instead, all he can do is roar a challenge to the slaver.
The slaver simply jams the stick into Yarmhrr’s ribs, sending him to the floor after a few seconds of burning agony. “Not so tough are you,” he sneers as he looks down at Yarmhrr’s curled-up form before walking off. All Yarmhrr can do is reach out towards his bondmate, slipping his fingers through the cage as she does the same, and cry.

----

Biria gives the quad one last look. “On go,” she whispers. “Three, two, one, go.”

On “go”, the double doors slide open to reveal a welcoming party of sorts - two women, one dressed in fancier duds than the other two, and one man, smiles on their faces and bribes of expensive alcohol and stims in their hands. The lead woman’s the only one quick enough on the draw to see what’s actually going on - she manages to drop the bottle in her hand and go for the handcannon on her hip when Biria’s first shot hits her square between the eyes. The massive slug - the casing for it looks like a metallic lipstick tube - blows the back of the slaver’s head all over her two comrades. The man is dispatched almost immediately afterwards by the leader of Hugh’s trin with a beam to the face, but the woman only gets hit in the leg and screams in pain as she scrambles for cover and her sidearm. Hugh swivels in place to track the moving target and then lets his XM-10 rip; the gun whaps just once, and a bright lance of energy pierces the woman’s side, flash-cooking her guts. What’s left of her can only twitch and finally die as the Wherren in the hold start howling and barking in fear.

“Trins 1 and 2, let’s move!” Biria shouts as she rushes forward, her rifle leading around the corner. “3 and 4, secure this hold and watch Manethna’s back! Verrill, keep the Wherren calm!”
“Got it!” Hugh replies, then moves into the hold. Looking around at the terrified Wherren caged like animals, it’s hard for him to keep his emotions bottled up, but he lowers his rifle, takes a deep breath and then starts bellowing in Whiirr-sign. ”Do not be afraid! I am Hugh Verrill, of 815.” Hugh’s phrasing leaves it open whether he means the unit or the village. ”The Bashakra’i and I are here to rescue you. Please, get down as low as you can and stay calm. The shooting will all be over in a few minutes.”
Hugh’s practice in shouting to be heard over a bunch of barking cubs pays off, and most of the hold hears his voice and calms down, hitting the floor in a hurry. Just in time, too, as a door at the far end slides open, disgorging four more slavers, all carrying cut-down beamers.
“Hostiles, forward!” Hugh’s Rav-Turai shouts. “Cover!”
Can’t move, crossfire will hit Wherren - that’s all the time Hugh has for thinking as he snaps his Tenner up and stands his ground, rapidly spraying death at the slavers to keep them from opening fire. This obviously isn’t the slavers’ first firefight in their own ship. They move straight cover near the door and barely notice Hugh’s incoming fire - but they certainly notice when Hugh’s suppressive fire strikes a power conduit and showers them in sparks of hot burning insulation and copper.
“Motherfucker!” one of the slavers shouts - and he’d better be happy with those words, as one of the strike team take advantage of his flailing to blow his arm off at the shoulder. A second slaver catches a beam square in the chest and hits the floor, dead right there. A second chorus of WHAPs, backed up the the occasional deafening BANG from the other hold lets Hugh know that Biria’s team is fully engaged as well. The slavers, still disorganized from being covered in shreds of burning wire, can only blind-fire back over their cover and predictably miss the whole team. Some of the Wherren howl and cry, but they all stay down.

“Halfway done!” Manethna shouts from the console near the airlock.
Hugh drops his tenner into its sling as he rushes forward, freeing a flash/bang from his web gear. ”Look away!” he shouts in Whiirr-sign as he hurls the diversionary device at the remaining slavers. The grenade bounces off the bulkhead behind the slavers and drops right into the pocket before going off with a deafening explosion that feels like it rattles the whole ship. One slaver is on the floor and not moving, the other has her hands on her ears and is out of cover - which is the last mistake she’ll ever make as multiple beams hit her at once and drop her to the floor.
“Moving to secure, cover me!” Hugh calls out, then raises his tenner again and cautiously pushes forward, ready to snap-shot anyone else coming into the hold. As he moves up to where the slavers took cover, he can see that the three who took Bashakra’i fire are very sincerely dead, while the lone survivor writhing on the floor got off easy - he’s only got burst eardrums and second-degree burns over his body to deal with. Hugh feels a torrent of rage rush from his heart into his arms, and he snaps his tenner on target, ending the slaver’s life with a WHAP that seems quiet against the devastating pressure wave of the flash/bang. After another sweep, Hugh presses against the doorway for cover from what lies beyond, then looks back to the trins behind him. “Hold is clear!” he calls to them.
“We have control!” Manethna shouts.
Hugh’s Rav-Turai is on his vox. “Biria, status?”
“All clear!” her voice calls over the vox between growling yarps of Whirr-sign. “Manethna, get these fucking cages open!”
“No can do, cages are all manual locked,” Manethna replies. “One of these assholes has the keys.”
“New task, find those keys!” Biria barks. “Ride home, we are ready for pickup.”
“Copy, ETA ten minutes,” the rebel freighter replies.
“I’m on the keys,” Hugh calls back. “Manethna, can you lock down the bulkheads? I don’t want any surprises coming at us.”
“Already on it,“ Manethna replies.

Hugh gets to searching the corpses, which mostly consists of first kicking them over with his boots to check both sides while keeping his tenner ready for surprises. Nothing’s moving anymore - but given the big fucking mess, it would be a miracle if they did. Once satisfied that there’s no more ambushes coming his way, Hugh tugs his gloves a bit tighter and sets to patting down the bodies. The man he shot proves to be carrying two stingers and a vox, plus a few lewd holos, while the woman lying next to him has a pocket full of lats - looks like the gambling wins from her trip planetside. Third time’s the charm, though: one of the men has a stunstick and a punched aluminum card that even Hugh recognizes as a key for a pin lock.

“Got the key!” Hugh calls out, then walks towards the cages. ”Listen up, everyone!” he shouts in Whiirr-sign. ”We have come to free you and bring you to safety. I will be opening the cages one by one. Please stay calm and exit one at a time. If anyone needs medical attention, please speak to me or one of my friends.” With the speechifying handled, Hugh walks up to the closest cage and sets to unlocking the door.

The first cage he unlocks sets a female free - who immediately grabs one of the slavers’ beam rifles. Hugh slowly raises his hands. ”Easy there. We’re done shooting. You’re safe.”
The female checks the charge and rod on the rifle. ”Don’t be mad if I don’t believe you,” she grunts. ”My name is Jorumm, I was a protector of my slum, and I know how to shoot.” She nods towards the door. ”I will cover the door while you set the others free.”
”Good to meet you, Jorumm,” Hugh says. ”And thank you for giving us a chance to talk. We’ll answer every question once we’ve got all the cages open.”
Jorumm grunts. ”You killed that slaver. That answers my questions.” She turns towards the entrance and takes a knee. ”Go.”
Hugh nods and moves on to unlock the other cages. The next one holds a medium-sized - well, Wherren medium-sized male who rushes past Hugh to groom Jorumm quickly before he rushes toward the cage with the keening and crying cubs. ”Unlock this one!” he barks at Hugh. Hugh nods to that, too, and unlocks the door to the cub cage. The cubs shy away from him as he pushes the door open, but when he steps aside, two of them run out and rush to embrace their father, crying and sniffling all the while. As Hugh goes to unlock more cages, there are a few more tearful reunions, but at the end it becomes - very painfully - clear that the math doesn’t work out - a few adult Wherren look anxiously about for their cubs, while a handful of cubs are huddling together for safety and shouting the names of their parents over each other - the adults hang their heads in shame and sorrow as none can answer the calls. Hugh steps closer to Manethna. “We need to search the rest of the ship,” he says. “Make sure that we didn’t miss anyone.”
“Nowhere else to search,” Manethna says as he looks at the mismatched numbers. “Biria, we’ve got two couples short cubs and three cubs - looks like a litter - without their parents.”
“Got four cubs - a litter and one extra - without parents and a very nervous-looking pair of bondmates over here,” Biria replies over vox.
“Okay, we’re bringing over ours,” Hugh says.

“How cute,” a woman’s voice says over the ship’s PA. “I’m fucking touched. Not a bad idea, let them enjoy the last few minutes any of you will be alive together.”
Hugh’s face goes from concern and relief to ice-cold in about a tenth of a second. “Your men are dead,” he spits back at thin air. “Right now, I care about getting those people to safety. I don’t give a shit about you. If you’re soliciting advice...do not make me give a shit about you. I assume you know who I am, so you can go over my resume at your leisure.”
“Oh, I know,” the woman says. “And that’s why it was so kind of you to seal yourselves inside the hold. You didn’t think opening a door to space was my only fail-safe, did you?” Above Hugh, a red light flicks on - Hugh only notices it in the reflection from Manethna’s wrist-holo.
Hugh stands still, hoping that if he doesn’t act like he noticed, he can keep her talking and give Manethna more time to hack the ship’s systems. “And you don’t think killing us will -”

That’s as far as Hugh gets before a blast of heat and flame blows him and Manethna to the floor! Hugh feels like he just head-butted a griddle, and Manethna screams as his gear webbing is engulfed in flame. Hugh rolls to smother any fires that might be on him, and yes, that smell of singed hair is from him, but all things considered, this could have ended much worse for him without his protective gear. Thank you, Dr. Wilfred Sweeny! Hugh thinks as he staggers to his hands and knees and tries to skedaddle over to Manethna to help smother the flames. Before he can, hands grab his ankles and pull him away, and he sees Manethna pulled roughly away as well. Hugh instinctively goes slack - if there’s one thing he’s learned by reading about Jump School, it’s that trying to fight when you’re being pulled over terrain is generally a bad idea. But it’s not fighting that he needs to worry about - as he’s rolled over, Hugh sees that it’s one of his own team manhandling him, and the reason why is immediately clear. Flames lap wildly at the ceiling of the hold, like an enormous broiler, and where Hugh and Manethna had stood, a white-hot jet of burning hydrogen lances out into the hold. The flame is so intense it’s blowtorched a cage in half, and as Hugh is checked for further injury, it’s obvious that blast wasn’t the only one, as Biria rushes in behind a group of Wherren.

“Half of the port hold is in flames!” Biria shouts into her vox. “Blasting charges on feed lines! We need evac now!”
“Four minutes!” the freighter replies.
“We’re going to be fucking roast spink in four minutes! Make it happen!” Biria shouts back before turning to Hugh. “Verrill! How injured are you?”
“I’m okay!” Hugh replies, staggering to his feet. “Any other casualties?”
“Harsa’s not gonna need a haircut for a while, but otherwise no!” Biria shouts. She looks around. “We have the Manta!”
“Get the Wherren cubs out!” Hugh advises. “We can blow an airlock and share our emergency air!”
“Not enough air!” Biria replies. “Otherwise, pretty much my thoughts!”

She waves for the closest Wherren to get into the Manta - but given their size, only two families and two individuals fit in the shuttle. The airlock is sealed, and with a burst of sound and a rocking of the ship, the Manta is away.
“Just think cool thoughts!” Biria shouts over the roar of the flames. Contrary to her joking, it really is starting to feel like an oven in the hold - Hugh can’t tell exactly how hot it is, but it’s hotter than anything he’s felt before. As he hunkers down away from the flames, he sees Yarmhrr and Jorumm pressed over their cubs, trying to shield them from the fires. There’s an entire firewall of Wherren shielding the remaining cubs, and they’re all panting their lungs out from the immense heat, sucking up both precious oxygen and poisonous fumes. Hugh’s not a religious man, but this might be a good time to pray.

And his foxhole prayers are answered by a sudden rush of air - blowing towards the door at the forward end of the hold! Beamer shots spray melted aluminum in the air as the last few slavers take pot-shots at the huddled Wherren. Jorumm roars a challenge and fires back, moving forward as she does so. Biria roars just as loudly and fires back herself, her first shot inches from taking down one of the shooters. Hugh feels honor-bound to use this second wind to do some damage: he takes aim down the sights of his tenner and squeezes off some good old single shots at the slavers - he’s done keeping heads down, this is about taking heads off. One of the slavers picks the wrong moment to reposition, and puts his head right in Hugh’s sights - but it’s only there for a moment before the beam takes it clean off.

Another rush of air blows, but this time towards the airlock. ”The freighter is here!” Biria howls. ”Everyone on board, now!”
“I’ll cover you!” Hugh shouts, taking a knee and swinging his rifle to the next target. The slavers have wised up, and are now just winging shots blind over cover without exposing themselves. Hugh keeps shooting and shooting and shooting at them regardless - he’s got to keep their heads down, but given the volatile atmosphere, he can’t chance another flash/bang. Biria and Jorumm stay up front, adding their own weapons to the barrage of covering fire.

Hugh’s efforts at covering fire work for a few minutes, long enough to get most of the Wherren on board, when one of the slavers fires, and by dumb luck hits a pocket of unburnt hydrogen! A third massive blast rocks the hull, and this time Hugh hears two cries of pain - one human, and one Wherren.
“Cover me!” Hugh barks, then skedaddles between fallen cages and stinging flames toward the downed Wherren - and Jorumm is in bad shape. A dark pool is spreading around one of her legs, both of which are not only broken but pinned under a cage, and her fur is already starting to mute its color.
“We have to fucking go - oh, First-dammit!” Biria shouts.
”Mama!” a little voice howls from behind, and both Hugh and Biria turn to see Yarmhrr rush forward to grab one of his escaped cubs, but he stops cold as he sees his bondmate trapped under the cage.
Biria is frozen in place momentarily, as Jorumm tries to pry her hands away from her wounds and back towards her dropped beamer and covering fire continues to pour from the rebels behind Hugh. Without a word, Hugh picks up her beamer and passes it to her.
”Get...my family...out,” Jorumm signs with shaky hands.
Biria swallows hard. “Yes, ma’am,” she says, and scoops up the crying cub.
“Move it!” Hugh barks, resuming his suppressive fire as he staggers backward towards the airlock.
”Mama!” the cub cries and desperately reaches for Jorumm as Biria pushes Yarmhrr ahead of her. He looks over his shoulder as well, and the two Wherren see Jorumm give them one last smile and sign for ”Love you” before she turns back towards the slavers, and with a bellow Hugh wouldn’t have thought her capable of, returns fire.

The rebels are holding the airlock open for them, and Biria pushes Yarmhrr through as Hugh pushes Biria, and the instant they’re in, the rebels slam the panel to close and seal the airlock. Biria and Yarmhrr clamber into crashers as the pilot disengages the docking mechanism and pulls away.
“Hey! What do you want me to do with the ship?” the pilot shouts from up in the bridge.
Hugh turns to Biria, who’s now completely dissolved into sobbing in her crasher, along with the cub she’s cradling in her arms. A grim expression settles over his face, and he leans forward to shout to the cockpit. “Blow it up!” he screams.
“Can do! Hold on!” the pilot shouts. Hugh rushes for the next free crasher and drops into place to ride out the fireworks. A few seconds later, Hugh feels the acceleration of the ship changing directions in a hurry, hears a rocket fly through the ship’s hull, and then the shouts from the bridge. “Yeah, fuck you! Vidas Lam, that thing blew up really good. You want to see?”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Hugh replies. Then, he realizes it’s over - it’s over, and they rescued all those Wherren and killed the slavers and blew up their ship - but three cubs lost their mother and a man lost his bondmate, and things will not be the same, ever again. Hugh didn’t know Jorumm, barely knew anything about her besides her name, that she could handle a beamer and that she loved her family more than anything, but he won’t forget about her. All that’s left for him to do is let out a breath he’s been holding, lean back into the crasher and weep hot tears of relief and regret.

----

The flight back to Atea is, if anything, even longer than the way to the slaver ship. Hugh feels like he’s thinking in molasses, like everything is just rushing past him and he’s standing in the middle slackjawed. He’s had his share of close calls, but the idea of burning to death on that ship - that terrifies him, and it just keeps on getting scarier the more he thinks about it. If there’s an upside to it, it’s that he’s not beating himself up over losing Jorumm - plenty of the Bashakra’i are doing that, loudly, but it doesn’t seem to be doing them any good. Biria - God, Biria. Hugh took her for a damn iceberg, the way she handled herself up until shit went sideways. She just completely melted down for a few hours, and now she’s mercifully asleep. It’s not a question of being weak or tough, it’s simply that underneath all the damage and resilience she’s still human and sometimes that means reacting to tragedy like normal fucking people do. But the way this tore her down does build a theory in Hugh’s head; amateur shrink Captain Verrill thinks he knows what he’s seeing, and it’s that the image of that woman dying at the hands of the slavers hit Biria very very close to home. Probably something to do with that band. Hugh looks down on his own arm, his own band, and he thinks - no, he quickly stops thinking any further along those lines. He is so not ready for that.

Still, life has to go on somehow. One of Jorumm’s cubs bawled its little eyes together with Biria, but eventually tired itself into sleep; Hugh watched her pet the cub’s little head for what felt like hours before she slipped off. The other two cubs are with their father Yarmhrr, also fast asleep with reddened eyes. Yarmhrr tried to keep it together, and when he failed he tried again, and all that got him was that he wept quietly and haltingly. Whenever he pulled it together for a few minutes, he would look over to Biria, with an expression Hugh quickly learned to read, built out of equal parts grief and gratitude: I don’t blame you. But blame’s a funny thing. Hugh’s not blaming himself, either. He’s been over it in his head a few times - okay, a lot of times - and in the end, there was nothing they could have done differently. Bombs were on their own circuit, and who the hell wires their ships to self-destruct anyway? (Seriously, when did this become Star Trek? Hugh thinks.) If he had moved away, that slaver bitch would have still blown them up. Can’t account for the slavers being dumb enough to keep trying to kill everyone even as their ship went up like a roman candle. And even if the ship hadn’t been on fucking fire and the slavers had run away and he’d gotten the jaws of life or a half-dozen Wherren to help him free Jorumm, she was dead the instant the explosion hit her, and the only fuzziness was in the details. Taken on purely military merits, Jorumm died protecting her people, and that deserves a salute and some manly tears and a solemn round or two in the next watering hole. But Hugh’s starting to think in terms of family, too, and...one family just got torn apart on his watch.

God, he’s glad all those dickskinning shitwhistling slaver asshole motherfuckers are dead. Would go back and beat them to death all over again with the blunt end of his tenner if he could. He’ll have to settle for a holo of blowing them all up, and in fact is on his fifth rewatching of the ship going pop in the vacuum of space when the shipmaster calls out to prepare for docking. Everyone climbs back into their crashers (some who need to be told that they should climb back into them) and docking proceeds smoothly.
The instant the ship is stationary, the rebel soldiers jump out of their crashers. “Vidas fucking Lam, I could use a drink after this one,” Manethna - now kauka’d up - says. He walks over to Biria, who now has a cub clinging to her side in the crasher. “What do you say, Biria?”
Biria nods. “Yeah, I’d say so,” she replies, 75% of the ice woman back. She nods in Hugh’s direction. “I think we all owe Hugh one for stepping up in there.”
“Thanks,” Hugh says. Drink Etiquette 101: when somebody says they owe you a drink, you don’t go around correcting them. “Anybody know the name of the bitch that tried to blow us up?”
“Raa Koros,” Bello replies, having performed the spymaster trick of walking into a room unseen. He ambles his lanky body over towards the little conference in the middle of wherren and rebels trying to shake the misadventure out of their heads. “At least according to the Cortex. It seems that she and her wife - responsible businesswomen, both - died in an attack by rebel terrorists.”
Biria grunts - both in reaction, and from hefting Yarmhrr’s cub, who still shows no interest in letting her go, up onto her shoulders as she stands up. “Probably the woman I shot in the face.”
“Businesswomen my ass,” Hugh says. “Do you think the other slavers got the message, though?”
“Only time will tell,” Bello replies. “One or two more missions like this might be necessary. Not exactly like this, though; it seems this mission had a few complications. What happened?”
“Koros took her wife being killed badly, blew up the hold with us in it,” Biria replies. “We lost one of the Wherren, this is her bondmate and cubs.” The steel remains in her voice.
Bello bows to Yarmhrr. ”My condolences,” he signs.
”She died saving all of our lives, and did so on her own terms,” Yarmhrr signs back. ”I will...” he stutters for a moment, then takes a deep breath. ”I will miss her, but fondly.”
Bello nods. “Still, a remarkable thing, returning with almost no casualties. I will expect a full reporting from you and Hugh by...midday tomorrow. So don’t drink too hard.”
“Yes, Sir,” Biria replies, and bows as much as she can with a cub hanging off her shoulders.
“You’ve got it,” Hugh replies. “Thank you for inviting me along.”
“You helped bring my people home,” Bello replies with a bow for Hugh. “That’s reason enough.”

Bello turns to leave and speak to the others, leaving Hugh, Biria and Yarmhrr alone. ”I suppose we should find a place to sleep, and stay,” Yarmhrr grunts. ”Is there...anywhere we might stay here?”
”I’m living alone in a family berth,” Biria offers. ”You and your cubs can stay with me.”
”Or you can come with me to Whiirr,” Hugh says. ”I think my family and our chief would like to meet you.”
”I...do not know. Can I stay here overnight, at least?” Yarmhrr asks.
”Of course,” Hugh says. ”No need to rush into anything. Just saying, we’re there and we’d love to have you there, too. Feel free to stop by.”
”Okay, thank you,” Yarmhrr replies.
Biria nods to Hugh. “I need to go help Yarmhrr and his cubs get settled in my quarters. You go enjoy yourself, Hugh. Good job.”
“Thanks,” Hugh says. “I’ll get back to you guys about that drink.”

But first, Hugh thinks as he disembarks, I need to call Rhea. A quick check of his watch confirms that the gateway’s currently linked up to Whiirr, so he grabs his vox and dials out to the orphanage’s vox. A few trills later, and his wrist-holo resolves itself to show Sijet on the other end. ”Hello, Hugh,” she says. ”I will get Rhea for you.”
Hugh just nods wordlessly. A few seconds later, Rhea appears on the screen, a smile and pattern for him on her face. ”Hello, bondmate,” she grunts. ”How is Atea?”
”Atea’s good,” Hugh says. ”Atea’s just fine. Listen, Rhea, I...I just...I wanted you to know that I’m thinking of you, and Torega, and I love you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Rhea smiles. ”I love you too, Hugh. When do you think you will be back?”
”Yeah, I’m...actually, I’m just about to go out for some drinks with a couple of guys.” Hugh says. ”I’ll try to catch the dog watch transfer. Don’t wait up for me.”
”All right,” Rhea says. ”Love you, bondmate.” She ruffles her fur and flashes a display of green and yellow.
”Love you, too, bondmate,” Hugh says. He cuts the feed just in time to start crying again. He finds the nearest bulkhead, sets his back against it and slides down, folding his right arm in front of his face. The leather band that smells so nicely of Rhea now gets its first taste of tears.

Deep in the tall stacks, Ngawai's stomach won't stop roiling as she carefully steps down the aisle. Strange products in multi-colored boxes are stacked high around her, and even Naloni's temporary quiescence inside her isn't enough to settle her nerves. Garrett's polite probing into her problems, not to mention the breakneck pace of the joint training operation, has actually made the last two weeks bearable - no sign of Harlon, her stash of purloined weapons has remained untouched, and every time he slides up to her, wraps his arms around her and whispers, "Are you ready yet?", even though it makes her heart twist to say no, it still feels better than when Garrett asked, "Are you all right?" and she gave the same answer. But now, in this place, Ngawai feels on edge and queasy, and doesn't know why.

Garrett pokes his head around the corner with a smile. "You like this one?" he asks, holding up a small stuffed bird.
Ngawai put on a smile and took the toy in her hands, even though it made her skin crawl to touch it. "It's a stuffed bird."
Garrett nods. "It's a 'roadrunner', it's native to this part of Narsai'i, and it's cute, I think."
"Wel...what about this?" Ngawai asks, and points to a stuffed four-legged brown and grey animal.
"It's a 'coyote', it's like a dog, it's a pack hunter and scavenger," Garrett says, then chuckles. "It's a common local religious myth that the coyote is a somewhat benevolent trickster god. Maybe we should get it for her."
Ngawai laughs. "Maybe we should get it for you," she says.
Garrett laughs as well and sticks the stuffed animal under his shoulder. "Maybe we should. I'm gonna keep looking, you want to -"
Ngawai shakes her head. "No, I'm good here." She remembers to throw in a smile. "Thanks."
Garrett nods and gives her a peck on the cheek before walking deeper into the store.

Ngawai turns and looks out the window onto Main Street, and the few locals walking around in the middle of the day. The quiet little town of Belen, New Mexico has already settled into the newfound interest and traffic through their well-worn corner of the world (some new construction on hotels and diners is just about finishing up, as a matter of fact), but there's still a degree of collective unease, particularly between the off-worlder staff at Mesas Negras and the townsfolk, both born out of a pervasive uncertainty. The townsfolk have been treated well by the few off-worlders that have ventured in, but have all been told by TV and radio how depraved and superior they are, and are still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and likewise the off-worlders are still on edge, waiting for the crazed Narsai'i assassins to come, despite the polite treatment from the Narsai'i in town.

That is not the source of the unease that is making Ngawai want to run out the door, though. After weeks of putting it off, Garrett had finally dragged Ngawai into town and shop for...(Ngawai takes a deep sigh at this)...baby things. Ngawai can't say why she's felt so uneasy about buying toys and clothes for their daughter, but now that she's here, her skin is crawling and her stomach is doing backflips. She hasn't thought much at all about her plans to kill Semo and then herself in the last week, and she'd even caught herself forgetting about it, daydreaming about laying in bed, holding Naloni to her chest. It felt pretty fucking good.

But now, in this toy store, Ngawai can only think of how much of a hypocrite she is - and a hypocrite in the worst possible way. This isn't some slight lie; she's standing here, promising the only man she's loved and trusted a life with her and their daughter, and back in their dorm, she's got a stash of high explosives and weapons intended to end her own life. What a coward. What a liar. He's too good for me. Ngawai sighs, and sinks into a chair by the front window.

After a minute, the door chimes. Ngawai turns to see a Narsai'i woman and her young daughter walk in the door; the woman smiles and nods to Ngawai. "'You look gorgeous, dear,'" she says.
Ngawai smiles in return. "'Thank you,'" she says, but her heart is turning inside-out.
"'Come on, Gayle,'" the woman says, and leads her daughter towards a display of dolls. "'Now, which one do you want?'" she asks, and takes a knee behind her daughter, hands on her shoulders.
"'Hmmmm...'" the little girl says, making a show of thinking about what she wants. Meanwhile, Ngawai wipes at her eyes, unsuccessfully trying to keep them from wetting her cheeks. "'This one!'"
"'Okay, it's all yours,'" the woman says, and gives her daughter a peck on the cheek.

Ngawai can't take it anymore, and jumps to her feet. She rushes into a part of the store occupied by boxes of...something, she can't see through her tears as she starts to cry into her hands. She slumps against a shelf and buries her face, trying to just will this away, wishing she could just be happy.
Then, things get worse. She feels a depressingly familiar chill run up her neck, and hears the metallic boot steps of Turai carapace on the concrete floor. "Aww. What you thinking, sexy?"
"Go away," Ngawai whispers.
"Oh, what's this?" Harlon says, standing over her. "You want me to go?"
Ngawai nods, and sucks in a sobbing breath. I need to be strong, for Garrett, for Naloni. "I...I don't want this, I want you to go," she whispers.
"Oh, you don't really mean that, babe," Halon says, and she can feel him squat down in front of her, the flesh hanging off of his shredded face.
Ngawai nods. "I do," she sobs, and looks Harlon in the eyes. One of them is the hazel they had in life, the other is milky white. "I...Garrett loves me, he knows that something is wrong, and he wants me to live."
"Oh, but something is wrong -" Harlon starts.
"No," Ngawai says, shaking her head and staring back at her feet. "Garrett knows, and...I can look at him and see he doesn't want me to do this. I don't want to do this. I want to be there for my daughter, I want to be there for Garrett, I want to be there for Angel and Swims-the-Black and all my friends -" she looks up at Harlon again as he sneers in her face, "- I want to be a better person than I was when I was with you, I'm going to be a better person. I don't have to do this."
"Really?" Harlon asks skeptically. "You? You're going to be a better person?"
Ngawai nods and sniffles.
"Oh, babe, that's just not possible," Harlon replies. "After everything that you've done, there's no forgiving you."
"Semo didn't know about you and me, and we were trying to -" Ngawai tries to say.
Harlon shakes his head. "No, not that."
"Rand? I did what I had to -"
"Rand was a loser flunky, he got what he deserved," Harlon says.
"I - they were all bad people -"
"And they deserved what was coming," Harlon answers.
Ngawai's confusion stops her tears for a moment. "Then...what? I killed Malenko -"

Harlon shoves his face nose-to-shredded-flesh with hers. "Like that was enough to make up for what you did!" he bellows, electing a squeal of terror from Ngawai as she shuts her eyes in fear. "You open your First-damn eyes!" Harlon shouts. Ngawai slowly opens her eyes, and sees Harlon pointing at the little girl from earlier, her back turned in the next aisle over. "Look what you fucking did!"
Each beat of Ngawai's heart feels like an artillery shell in her chest as she looks through the shelving to the next aisle. As the child slowly started to turn around, Ngawai saw the Turai rag doll in her hand, and she went rigid with fear.
"No," she moaned, a plaintive denial against...what she couldn't see, but at once also had burned in her mind.

She knew the red spatter was there down her cheek, the image obvious before her eyes had processed it. As the little girl slowly turned her way, a slash of pink is peeled back from one side and lies loosely over her nose - a flap of skin. Terror paralyzes Ngawai beyond breath, and the child turns the rest of the way, staring at Ngawai with her one visible eye - the other covered by the flaps of skin that was flayed off her cheek to expose the tender muscle underneath, so it could be excised, cooked and served, and her shoulder expertly butchered. To the little girl's left, a little boy, his jaw removed and tongue cut out, standing impossibly on one leg, the other cut to steaks in his hands.

And then there are others: some with their faces flayed open, others have had livers and organs removed, skinned for curing, limbs butchered for cooking. All have a wound that Ngawai knows is there without seeing: a sliced neck, done with a delicate blade, single-edged, wickedly sharp - done with Lady Talia Malenko's blade. They are all around her: dozens of children, filling the store, all of them butchered and dissected, staring silently at Ngawai through milky eyes, and she screams. First, in terror at what she sees, but then, with what she knows.

Harlon stands over Ngawai as she screams over and over. "You did this." His voice is even, quiet, condemning. "All of these children, hundreds of them, murdered and butchered as you stood next to the monster responsible, took her place by her side and protected her life. You took money to save a devourer of innocent children. You looked the other way as she gleefully planned and picked out which children would be murdered and served to her each night."

Ngawai weeps on the floor as Harlon's words dominate her hearing, drowning out Garrett's voice, shouting her name in the distance. "If you thought killing her would somehow clean your hands, you could not be more wrong. Your hands are stained with the blood of innocent children. There is no cleaning that away."

Harlon squats down in front of Ngawai, his boots obscuring her view of the crowd that's gathered around her. "What would you even do with Naloni? All you know how to do with a child is offer them up to a sadistic psychopath to be cut up for parts. Naloni wouldn't stand a chance with you as a mother. You'd ruin her, break her, kill her, like you killed all the others. She's not better off without you because of what you did - she's better off without you because of what you are."

Somewhere beyond Harlon, Garrett pushes his way through a distant crowd, his mouth making out her name, but Ngawai can't hear him. "Someone like you doesn't deserve a child. You don't deserve a husband, or friends, or love. You're a monster, just like Malenko. You deserve to be punished. You deserve to die." Ngawai squeezes her eyes shut, but Harlon's voice remains. "You deserve to die."

----

Garrett is weighing his options on how to get a set of Imperial/English wooden blocks made when a terrified scream rips through the small toy store. The sound doesn't makes it to Garrett's conscious mind before the items in his hand hit the floor and he's off through the aisles, horrific scenarios running through his mind as he shoves past patrons and desperately looks down aisle after aisle, shouting Ngawai's name.

It's not until the last aisle that he sees her, or at least the crowd that's gathered around her; all he can see is her face, staring forward and wet with tears as she stares catatonically ahead. His stomach drops into his feet and drags his heart along with it.
"Ngawai!" Garrett screams in terror, and desperately tries to push his way through the crowd.
On the other side of the crowd, an older man in an apron bends down to pick Ngawai up; he only gets her a few inches off the floor before she snaps awake and screams at such a volume that it's only the shock of the moment that keeps him from dropping her. Her right arm hauls back and delivers a vicious cross that snaps the clerk's head to the side and drops both him and her right to the floor. That sends the crowd scattering, clearing the way for Garrett to hit the floor on his knees and slide to a stop next to Ngawai's sobbing fetal form.
Garrett scoops Ngawai up on his arms and cradles her as she wraps her arms around his shoulders and weeps into his chest. He gently shushes her, but Ngawai is beyond being comforted. "I killed them!" she wails. "I did nothing and they died!"
Garrett, bereft of context or knowledge of what she's saying, simply holds her tighter. "It's okay, I'm here, lahna," he whispers as he strokes her back and fails to hold back tears of his own.

A few seconds later, the door chime sounds again and another voice behind the counter shouts, "'Over there!'" Bootsteps follow in their direction, and Garrett looks up to see two New Mexico state police officers barge around the corner, tasers drawn. There's a moment when they both meet Garrett's eyes, but then the next the laser sights on each taser turn on, one at him and one at Ngawai.
In that instant, Garrett only processes one thing: they are now threatening his wife and daughter. A rush of adrenaline forces Garrett to draw in a deep breath as he lets Ngawai slide from his hands and turns red with rage, and he charges forward, blasting forth a powerful bellow that would drown out Swims-the-Black's best battle cry. One trooper manages to fire his taser, but Garrett's dodge and screaming sends the dart wide, and then Garrett is on him. A wild haymaker almost spins the trooper entirely around and drops him straight to the floor unconscious, but his partner finishes the fight by embedding both taser probes in Garrett's back. He manages one more shout as 5,000 volts fire off his muscles, but then he too drops to the floor out cold. Ngawai reaches pitifully for Garrett's limp form before she too falls unconscious.

----

The first thing Garrett sees as he slowly opens his eyes is pink. An ugly, muted, institutional pink, which only means one thing - this is a drunk tank. His first attempt to move ends in an agonized shout as locked stiff muscles in his back send spikes of pain up his spine, but his second allows him to slowly rise off of the aluminum bench that he’d been laid out on. The instant his mind cleared of its electrically-induced haze, panic rushed back into him: Where is Ngawai?

A shuffling from the floor behind him spins Garrett around. There, on a mattress put down on the floor, is Ngawai. As he looks her way, she shifts slightly and murmurs something in her sleep, then sucks in a single tearful breath. Whatever is going on in there, it's not pleasant.
Garrett immediately slides carefully off the bench and onto the mattress behind his wife, and wraps his arms around her. Ngawai grabs tightly to his wrists and pulls them close against herself as Garrett buries his face in her hair and waits for her to wake up, eyes closed as he breathes her in.
A few minutes later, Garrett feels Ngawai shift around a bit more, and carefully guide his hands to support her stomach. "I'm sorry," she whispers.
"Ready to have that talk now?" Garrett whispers back.
Neither of them can stop from smirking at that, but Ngawai’s breath still stutters with her trembling lip. "I guess so," Ngawai replies.

They both help each other back upright, and sit on the mattress facing each other. Ngawai can't bring herself to let go of Garrett's hands, and instead opts to sit facing him, holding on. Garrett simply sits and waits, giving her a supportive smile.
Ngawai sighs. Masters above, I don't know how he does it. She feels her shoulders slump. "I...I don't know where to start."
"Start wherever you want," Garrett replies, then squeezes her hands. "But I think that you might want to start with what's really bothering you."
Ngawai opens her mouth, but as she inhales, she smells blood in the air, and suddenly she's surrounded by the mutilated bodies of all of Malenko's innocent victims again. She shuts her eyes tight, trying not to see, but even with her eyes closed, she can feel their eyes staring at her, wondering why she protected their killer. It's all she can do to suck in a few sobbing breaths and whimper.
But Garrett tightens his hold on her hands and pulls her back. "Ngawai! Whatever it is, it's not going to change you and me!"
"Yes, it will!" Ngawai wails back.
Garrett lunges forward and wraps his arms around her. "No, it won't," he says. "Neither of us are perfect, not even close. But I know you're a good person who'd only do something that affects you this badly if you had a good reason." He lets her go, but keeps her hands in his. "Don't worry." Ngawai peeks her eyes open a bit to see him sitting there, smiling at her still. "You're stuck with me. I'm not going anywhere."

Ngawai sucks in a few more sobbing breaths, then nods. "...I...I..."
But then that First-damned chill returned to her spine. "He'll leave you," Harlon says. Ngawai looks up, and sees him standing over Garrett. "He can't possibly know how bad the things you've done are. He says that he'll stay now, but when he knows? He's gone."
Ngawai shakes her head. "No, no, you're wrong. He says he knows that I'm a good person."
Garrett's smile drops. "Ngawai? Who are you talking to?" he asks, but she can barely hear him.
"And Semo! You want to kill one of his friends, and you expect him to understand that?" Harlon continues. "Just face it, he'll be so horrified, he'll probably want to kill you himself."
Ngawai can only shake her head and moan a denial in response. "No, you're wrong, you're wrong, Harlon."

Then Ngawai feels Garrett's hands grab her by the shoulders. "Ngawai!" he shouts as he gives her a shake. "Listen to me! Harlon is dead! He's not here!"
"And yet, here I am!" Harlon shouts, his voice filling the room, drowning out Garrett's. "You brought me here for a reason, sexy!"
"Because you were killed!" Ngawai shouts back. "You were killed, and I have to avenge that! That's why!"
"You didn't seem too broken up about it at the time!" Harlon shouts back, stepping out from behind Garrett. "You signed right up with the Narsai'i that nearly blew me in half right after!" He runs a cold finger along Ngawai's cheek, and she recoils away from it. "It must be because you know I was always right! I made the decisions, and you happily went along."
Ngawai almost nods, but the thought of agreeing with Harlon makes her stomach turn. "I...no! You were...brash, and didn't listen to anyone! I saved our asses dozens of times from your mistakes!"

"Then maybe it's because you loooved me?" Harlon says, giving a dramatically overdone and sarcastically dopey look at that. He kneels down behind her. "You slept with me, shared secrets with me, killed and betrayed for me!" he says, and as he speaks, wraps one hand around to grab a breast and the other fondles her ass. "You loved me the same way you love Garrett. He's a good follow-up act, but I was the real deal too."
Ngawai gags on a rush of nausea, but doesn't understand why. "I did love you," she whispers, the sensation of Harlon's hands on her body turning her stomach. "You were just like Garrett, that's why I love him. Garrett's affectionate, considerate, caring, kind, and you...you were all of those...things?" She stops.
"Ooh, tell me how I was so affectionate?" Harlon says, and gives her ass a slap. "Just like that? Or was I considerate when I every time you asked about quitting Malenko, I told you that the next big Apprehender contract would be enough that we could quit Malenko's service, and it somehow never was? I was so caring when I told you to just look the other way when Malenko brought her victims on board, too. So kind when I insisted we stay in the employ of a predator that eats children, and blamed you for us staying." Harlon's groping stops for a moment. "Vidas Lam, I was kind of an asshole, wasn't I?"
The effort of trying to process what Harlon's saying makes Ngawai's head spin. "But...I loved you...you were so kind..."
Harlon laughs. "Babe, you're comparing me to the Kansatai that told you to suck it up when those bottom-feeding smugglers killed Zokol, and the father that beat the shit out of your mother because he was a fat fucking failure. You were just fucking happy I wasn't smacking you around for kicks. That wasn't love, that was desperation."
Ngawai's eyes go wide. "But Garrett loves me."
Harlon's grasp turns into a painfully crushing hold, and Ngawai cries out. "Yes, he does. You lucked into the real thing - but here's the joke. You're too much of a fucking monster now to deserve it. You're worse than the Kansat, worse than your father, worse than me. You knew better, and you did it anyway." Harlon grabs her by the chin and points her face at Garrett's, who is staring intently at Ngawai, still holding her hands, waiting there with red eyes and slick cheeks and staring anxiously for her to come back to him. "Take a good look, because this is going to be the last time you see him. You don't deserve him."

Ngawai looked Garrett in the eyes, expecting to see disgust, or fear, or regret. Instead, all she sees is a man - her husband - matching her gaze with worry and love for her. She sees the man who'd given everything for her and had loved her without condition, a man who has proven to be stronger, more cunning and more resilient than anyone she's ever known. She thinks about what is holding onto her - her fears, her regrets, her mistakes and her trauma, and realizes that she'd bet him against the darkness hanging off of her any day.
"No," Ngawai says. "I do." She takes Garrett's hands and holds them over her heart, and in the process, knocks Harlon clear off her shoulders. She turns around to face him as he lies sprawled out on the floor, her eyes narrowing in hate. "You were a liar and a bastard, Harlon. I protected Malenko for you, because I thought I loved you. But you were only interested in one thing: yourself, and you used me to get paid. And now I know better. You don't deserve to be avenged. You don't deserve to be remembered. I'm a better person now, because of Garrett and the 815. And I don't deserve to die."

Ngawai blinks to clear her tears away, and when she opens her eyes, Harlon is gone. She turns back to Garrett, an awkward smile on her face. "Hey, lahna."
Garrett sucks in a relieved breath, one he'd probably been holding the whole time waiting for Ngawai to snap out of it and come back to him, and temporarily pulls one of his hands away to wipe his eyes. "Hey yourself."
"So..." Ngawai tries to give Garrett a sheepish shrug, but she can't seem to manage it. In its place, she resorts to hugging him as tightly as she is able. "I have some things I need to tell you."
"You sure?" Garrett asks.
Ngawai nods, and starts to cry again. "I'm sure."

Calls from local law enforcement have never been one of Angel's favorite surprises, especially when they interrupt meals. All the desk sergeant said was that Ngawai Holoni was in custody after an altercation in a toy store in town, no charges were going to be filed, and that she requested that Angel come and pick her up.

Altercation in a toy store? A dozen images pop into Angel’s head, all of them amusing, and none of them even close to correct. He settles on a very pregnant Ngawai reenacting the closing scenes of Butch Cassidy with Garret and nerf guns as settles into his skimmer, jumping when a very loud ‘thud’ reverberates through his driver side window - revealing the rather large and concerned looking bulk of Swims.

“Let me guess, the spook called you? Get in.”
"I cannot think of what might have happened, but...it is Garrett and Ngawai," Swims rumbles. "Who knows."

Angel hovers up his skimmer to a hundred feet up and blasts out over the desert towards town. Travelling in a straight line towards Belen, instead of the grand total of three right-angle turns required to reach Main Street - not to mention hovering along at well over 100 miles per hour - cuts the travel time to the police station considerably. Upon arrival, the townsfolk of Belen might be used to off-worlder people, but a flying car gliding into a decelerating orbit above downtown before gently depositing itself in front of the police station is definitely something new. By contrast, the hubbub when Angel climbs out of the car in an impeccable blue and metallic grey suit - with matching Imperial bow tie/cravat combo - with Swims-the-Black is almost disappointed.

At the front desk, the sergeant gives Angel and Swims a curious look. "Who are you representing?"
“Ngawai Holoni. The big fella is here for Garrett Davis.”
The sergeant looks up at Swims, who just blinks back and grunts an affirmative with a slight glow of orange in his fur. "Right. They're in the drunk tank - they were both crazy. And tell Mr. Davis that we won't press charges for assaulting an officer if he covers medical in return for not mentioning what happened."
Angel arches his eyebrow. “Define ‘cover medical’.”
"He fractured Officer Dale's jaw," the sergeant replies, giving Angel a hostile look. "That's all I know."
“I see. I’ll pass on the message.” The scout had the feeling that there was more to it than that and ‘They were both crazy’. “You sure there’s not anything else I should know?”
"No, sir," the sergeant says. "Drunk tank's in the back."

Angel nods, heading back to the drunk tank, a place he decidedly wasn’t expecting to ever need to find Garrett and Ngawai. Swims follows behind, an apprehensive shade of blue. The door is open slightly, and inside, Angel and Swims see Garrett and Ngawai, seated on a mattress placed on the floor and in each other's arms. They're both sniffling and leaning against each other, but they clean themselves up when Angel and Swims walk in.

“Well, at least the pretty one called me.” Looking over the two, his look was genuinely concerned. “You two alright?”
Swims immediately hits his knees next to his friends and puts an arm around their shoulders.
Garrett leans against Swims' muzzle. "We're...well, I guess we're fine, I think," he says with a smirk as Ngawai chuckles.
Angel offers Ngawai an arm, a soft smile on his face. “A definitive statement if I’ve ever heard one. Word has it you two went crazy in a toy store, and Garrett broke someone’s jaw. You two know that if you’re having a party you’re supposed to invite me.”
Ngawai takes Angel's hand - and immediately gives Angel a tight hug, her stomach pressed between them. "Thank you for coming," she says.
"Ah, well...Angel, you might want to sit down," Garrett says as he scratches his head nervously.

Angel holds Ngawai as she hugs him. “Of course.” His gaze turning to Garrett, he frowns. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
"Uh...Ngawai...she's..." Garrett seems incapable of saying much.
“Just say it Garrett.” Angel’s look grew a little more concerned.
"She's been hallucinating Harlon urging her to attack Semo," Garrett spits out. "But I think it was a manifestation of her guilt over letting Malenko murder and eat dozens of children being set off by being about to have a child of her own." Ngawai squeals and starts to cry into Angel's shoulder, and Garrett stands up and wraps his arms around his wife from behind. "Not that that's much better."
Swims turns a deep violet and puts a hand on Ngawai's and Garrett's shoulders.
“Oh God, Ngawai…” Angel lets her cry into her shoulder, stroking her hair before moving slightly as Garrett moves behind her.
"And I think the toy store was a trigger," Garrett says in between whispering silently in his wife's ear.

He nods once, and Angel’s expression is firm, but caring, and importantly holds absolutely no judgement in it. “Alright, lets get you two home. Swims, can you get them to the skimmer while I close out whatever paperwork the Sergeant is going to want filled out?”
Swims nods, and together Garrett, Angel and Swims guide Ngawai under Swims-the-Black's arm for support. Swims gives her a gentle lick on the forehead, and Ngawai latches onto him as he guides her out of the drunk tank.
"Did I really break that asshole's jaw?" Garrett asks as he brushes the lint from the mattress off of his clothes and wipes his eyes.
“You did. You remember why?”
"He was going to tase Ngawai," Garrett says bluntly. "She was panicked and disoriented, and he was going to hurt her. So I stopped him."
“Figured it was something like that.” Angel nodded toward the retreating Swims and Ngawai. “Go. I’ll finish up here and be out in a moment.”
Garrett nods and wraps his arms around Angel. "Thanks for being here."

Angel nods, “Of course”. Heading back to the front desk, he looks at the Sergeant, his expression decidedly less sympathetic. “I suppose there’s paperwork?”
The sergeant slides a file across the counter to Angel. "They need to sign off on the incident report before they can leave, you can't just let them go."
Angel looks the incident report over for a moment, his frown growing. “And where on here is the part where your men try to taze a pregnant woman?”
The sergeant looks away for a moment. "I believe that is not being included, pursuant to the verbal agreement with Mr. Davis."
Angel nods, reading over the incident report again. “Alright, I’ll be right back.” Returning a moment later with the clipboard, he slides it back over the counter. “And the jaw?”
The sergeant's face darkens. "Will not be mentioned either."
“Good. Have a nice day sergeant.”

Back out at the skimmer, Garrett and Ngawai are in each other's arms again, this time in the back, while Swims waits in the front passenger seat. Ngawai waits for Angel to pull down the gull-wing door on his side before speaking up. "There's some C4 and detonators, and a chamakana I need you to get rid of," she says. "I don't...it doesn't feel safe having them around me right now."
Angel pulls the skimmer up out of the police station, nodding once. “Just tell me where they are and I’ll take care of it.”
"And...I'll talk to the team," Ngawai says, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry for hiding this from you both." She sniffles. "From all of you. I - it just seemed so - I thought I didn't deserve any of you. I still don't know if I do." Garrett gives Ngawai a hug and peck on the cheek.
“It’s alright. What matters is what you do now.” Angels statement is simple, and Ngawai gets the feeling it applies to both not telling him, and what she wasn’t telling him about.
"And we will all be there for you, Ngawai," Swims adds. "For the both of you."

Ngawai nods. "Thank you." She looks down at her belly and puts a hand on her bulge. "She's going to be so lucky to have people better than me in her life."
Garrett shushes her. "No, she's going to be lucky to have you in her life. I'm going to make sure of that." He looks at Angel through the rear-facing mirror. "Only in the team, right?"
Angel smiles back at Ngawai through the rearview mirror. “That’s just because her mother was smart enough to collect good friends.” He nods to Garrett. “Not a word.”
Swims nods as well.
"Good," Ngawai says, "don't need the fucking Narsai'i shouting about it." She squeezes even closer to Garrett. "I mean, thanks."
“You’re welcome,” Angel replies.

MSNBC, 1322 EDT

"Out here, in the desert sands of Edwards Air Force Base in California, the first steps of the most significant strike against the Jade Imperium launched by Earth have begun. Already, tons of supplies and ammunition are being loaded into transport planes bound for the two Gateways at Mesas Negras and Diego Garcia, then from there to a secret staging area on the friendly world of Vouskiano. From these three points, the United States Army will send a strike force of more than five thousand to secure and occupy the planet of Botane. According to the Department of Defense, Botane is a lightly held industrial world, and that over the anticipated two month campaign, removing Botane from Imperial influence will significantly cripple their war machine. However, it is this statement that is the point of contention between the US military and the newly-independent Gateway Research and Homeworld Defense Initiative. GRHDI officials cite reports from Task Force 815 and our off-world allies that Botane is both significantly larger, and more heavily defended than Defense Department reports suggest. They claim that such an attack will suffer significantly more casualties than predicted at best, and would be a trap for all those who set foot on Botane at worst. Defense Department officials cite the skepticism of experts on the trustworthiness of our off-world allies and Task Force 815, and have stated that, quote, 'We choose to place our confidence in the ability for the men and women of the United States Army to overcome any obstacle the Imperium could place in our way. If a major planet like Boranai could be so easily captured, then an industrial backwater like Botane should be easily captured and held, and furthermore, we are disappointed in the continued undermining of the war effort and morale from our own government. We are all fighting in the same war, and it is time we all got on the same page,' unquote. Whether or not the Army's confidence turns out to be well-founded or disastrously misplaced hubris remains to be seen."

----

Fox and Friends, 0715 EDT

"And now, I think we should talk about the GRHDI's attempts to undermine our boys in uniform as they prepare for what is, I believe, the largest assault against the Imperium yet. It is frankly disturbing how often the Gateway Research and Homeworld Defense Initiative makes a statement that directly contradicts what the United States Department of Defense says."
"And today, they once again used their allies in the liberal media to spread their gloom and doom: 'On the eve of the US Army's strike at Botane, as our men and women in our armed forces assemble in the staging areas at Mesas Negras, Diego Garcia, and Vouskiano, we once again ask for the generals leading this attack to reconsider this ill-advised plan and give us time to work with our Bashakran allies to find a better way of striking a blow against the Imperium. As it stands now, we are certain that this attack, as planned, will represent a massive setback for our efforts against the Imperium and doom thousands of brave men and women to capture and death at the hands of the Imperial Turai.'"
"Well there's a cheerful statement."
"You know, when I read something like this, I have to wonder whose homeworld they're defending over at the GRHDI. I mean, really. Why don't they just advise us to roll over and surrender?"
"I don't think that they're defeatist by choice, though. They're obviously depending on the aliens for intelligence, and they're plainly not trustworthy - if they're not intentionally feeding us bad information to ruin our chances of victory over the Imperium. I mean, how else could they hope to win?"
"I wouldn't go that far - I think that the idea that they're simply apologists for the Imperium out of a misplaced fascination with their culture and technology makes more sense. It would explain the Task Force 815 problem much more cleanly."
"And speaking of which, Task Force 815 has remained disturbingly silent regarding our boys' planned strike against the Imperium."
"That they have. Ever since one of their members gunned down four American citizens in the streets of our nation's capital and were pardoned under questionable circumstances by President Obama, they've been awfully quiet."
"Does anyone know where they are or what they're up to?"
"Not that I'm aware of. And that raises some disturbing questions, I think. Where are these so-called leaders, this tip of the spear? Why aren't they leading this charge themselves? Are they simply abandoning our troops in their hour of need, or are they possibly colluding with the Imperium to sabotage our efforts to fulfill their own predictions? Call, email or message us on Twitter as we discuss the possibilities after the break."

Even in the isolation of the training going on at Mesas Negras, it's hard to ignore the coming shitstorm over the US Army invasion of Botane. Letters and voice mails and emails and every kind of communication imaginable are deluged with media requests for statements from the team, all fended off by GRHDI handlers with a very straightforward "no comment". However, the sensation that 815 needs to have some kind of plan to deal with this is felt acutely throughout the team, and when Garrett widecast a vox to the team a few days before the invasion, it might have been very terse, but it didn't need a lot of explanation.

"Lunch meeting tomorrow on Atea at the ready room to talk about what the fuck we're gonna do."

At the meeting, Garrett and Ngwai are lounging on the sofa, Ngawai chowing down on a hunk of roast scrofa between two hunks of bread. A new bracelet is around her wrist - those of you who know your medicae tech know it as a health monitor. It seems that Ngawai's so close to popping that the medicaes at Mesas Negras have her on 24/7 observation. Garrett seems commensurately more attached to her side, not entirely impossible to understand, given Ngawai and Garrett's collective troubles as of late. Still, he seems reluctant to even leave her side, substituting his usual bow of greeting with a nod from the sofa.

Once everyone's there and has their food, Garrett starts the discussion off. "So, like I said in the widecast, what the fuck are we gonna do about the Narsai'i strike on Botane? This thing's gonna be one disastrous clusterfuck, we're agreed on that, right?"

Hugh’s entrance into the room seems strangely...emotional, as he goes around and makes sure to shake everyone’s hand and greet them individually. Not exactly his usual style, but after the heartbreaker battle on the slaver ship, perhaps understandable. He settles down with some fried spink nuggets, but his attention is on Garrett and Ngawai. Seeing a chance to enter the discourse in Garrett’s open question, he chimes in. “From start to finish,” Hugh agrees. “They’ve been broadcasting their plans all over the news. It’s like they’re daring Imperial spies and sympathizers to send news home. Only I know they’re not that smart. Still, when this goes pear-shaped, I bet that’ll be the excuse - the Imperium knew they were coming and set an ambush. Obviously based on intel we or the Bashakra’i fed the Imperium, too. Two talking points for the price of one.” He shakes his head. “And they’re throwing five thousand lives away on this damn temper tantrum. Do we have a plan B for our guys? Anything to help them?”

Luis shakes his head, still shocked at the shear idiocy of the brass planning this, and feeling the weight of dread at how bad this is probably going to go. "I'm not sure what we can do, Botane's not very active for the rebels from what I know. And once this goes down...anybody we sent into there before or shortly after will be under a hell of a lot of scrutiny." He runs a hand through his hair. "I don't want to believe there's nothing we can do, but I can't think of anything yet. Those guys...are on their own, for better or worse, the Army's going to end up hanging them out to dry." He looks to Garrett and the others. "I've been thinking about this, but tell me somebody else has something, we've got to be able to do something for them?"

Garrett sighs. "I've been talking with Brinai about what the Bashakra'i can do to help out, but..." He picks at the sofa. "Botane doesn't have a lot of resources on it that they can leverage, and those that are there are already head-down and getting ready to ride out the storm. The Turai are going to turn the planet inside-out afterwards, and she's just trying to keep her assets alive. I've passed along the Army's countersigns so they can at least identify themselves as friendlies, but the best Brinai said she could do is ask them to help only if it doesn't put their missions and lives in jeopardy. Other than that, there's pretty much nothing else we can do."

Zaef lets a breath out through his nose with a grimace and reaches into his nearby duffel. "Kid, we can't stop them from going. We try interfering in any way, DoD will roast us like a reactor meltdown, and the troops go marching on through anyway." Zaef pulls a beer bottle out from the bag, pulls off the top fluidly, and offers it to Luis. "Right now, we gotta figure out how we respond, and avoid getting blamed for someone's stupid mistakes. And make sure those idiots get their due respect for this, if we can."

Assuming Luis takes the bottle, Zaef reaches back in the bag and pulls out another one. "And for the record, I really want to get through one of these meetings without needing one of these," he says, frowning, shaking the bottle as he does so.

Luis accepts the bottle and takes a long pull before setting it down and shaking his head. "I'd like to just get through one of these meetings without wanting to kill somebody whose supposedly on the same side as us. They're going to end this having done us more harm and killed more Narsai'i than any of the Imperium's finest, and I want to make sure that little fact makes it into their intro the next time their on their little spin machine."

Angel frowns slightly, drawing something with his finger on the smooth surface of the table.

"We're all agreed this is going to be a clusterfuck. In my mind the best thing we can do is something else. The Imperium is going to try to make a lot out of 5,000 captured, scared POW's facing a numerically and technologically superior foe. If we leave them to their own devices, this is going to be a propaganda victory that'll play 24/7 on every screen they've got. And it's going to scare folks back home - scare them a lot. We need to do something big, public and embarrassing."

"How big can we go with no Army and no prep?" Hugh asks. "I'm the last guy who turns down good PR, but the reason we've succeeded so far is good planning and good support. And we're running out of low-hanging fruit. So, anything we pull together in time to matter is going to be extremely risky, and I don't want to hand the Imperium the much bigger propaganda coup of taking us down. Not to mention that would leave us kind of dead." Hugh shakes his head. "I think that unless anyone has a brilliant idea for a Botane op that directly helps our boys, we need to take this hit."

"We can't afford to take a hit," Ngawai protests. "We are feared by the Imperium for being nearly unstoppable. If we simply stand there and let them smear us with Narsai'i stupidity, it will hurt us badly."
Garrett nods. "That's our perspective, pretty much. We have to find a way to ensure that Thrax can't credibly stand in front of the Imperium and pin the failure of the Botane invasion on us, whether that's being seen conspicuously elsewhere at the time working for our own or Bashakra'i ends, like Angel said, or, if it comes down to it, simply widecasting a Cortex announcement distancing ourselves from the attack - if we have to."

"We don't exactly need to go big in order to take the sting out, Verrill," Zaef replies. "We just need them to know who's who and walk away. Just putting our name back out there will taint some of the success. As for targets, Brinai and Bello can give us some names we can capitalize on. Might even be able to help out the boys on Botane, indirectly," He finishes, offering Verrill the bottle he's holding.

Hugh takes the bottle with a nod. "Okay, then let's talk options. Do we have anything in the near-future pipeline that can stand to be executed now? Or do we just pick a soft target and plan from scratch?"

"The only options I can think of off the top of my head are raiding orbital outposts and pirating Imperial patrols," Zaef says with a shrug. "If you want to hit some bigger targets, we can ask the old folks for a few suggestions."

Luis shrugs. "Do we really have time to figure out a patrol to hit, or get enough intel to make a clean raid on an outpost?" He thinks for a minute. "What if we just do something again? We could always use another Needleship, and we've got practice grabbing those. Something like that going missing might be enough to make a bit of a distraction."

Hugh grins. "Audacious and long-term useful, I like it," he says. "I don't think they'll fall for the same tactics again, but I assume that once we get you inside to a computer terminal, the hard part is over."

Hunter pulls his head from his hands. Over the course of the meeting, the team has slowly realized where he'd been over the past few weeks: getting brushed-off, cussed-out, and sympathized-with by most of Washington's military, intelligence, and policty elites. After a while it was just a matter of cataloguing the futility. He's a little less full-energy than normal.

"All things equal, I'm for doing something over nothing. If we can, it'd be nice to gash a soft target in an unexpected place, somewhere that shows we can hit anywhere, at any time, that nowhere is safe and everywhere must be gripped tightly. That said, we do need to avoid irrelevance. If we're worried about Thrax grandstanding, why don't we hit something of his?"

Luis nods at that. "We'd certainly want to hit something big name if we can. But places like that...Arkhela's Eye, that kind of thing, most of those are really well defended. Now, though, some of the Needleships are pretty famous. Like Enterprise, or something--they're big historic names. Maybe we hit one of those? Brinai or Bello might have a better target list."