Cosmosis

Admission

The Green Complex itself was situated on the south face of the titanic plateau that overshadowed the borough of Cordani. Around to the west on that same plateau, there was a surprisingly long and deep canyon, at the very back of which was the ugly functional entrance for anyone or anything not entering through the front door.

The gatehouse at the canyon entrance was still empty when we rolled up to it, but the gate was now lowered. If the gate could be controlled remotely, what was the point of having a gatehouse?

We took the winding road the half-mile or so up the canyon where two metal shutters were laid directly into the rock, each one large enough to admit a semi-truck. The road up to the shutters actually cut into the plateau itself, leaving the mass of stone to hang overhead while we pulled to a stop.

One of the large freight shutters was open, and seven Casti were waiting for us before it. Four of them were guards or security of some kind, wearing thick armor padding with pistols in holsters.

Of the remaining three, none of them wore strict uniforms, but they were all wearing minor variations on the same type of semi-formal outfit. I didn’t have a sharp eye for design, but I had reminded myself that Casti doctors wouldn’t necessarily all wear long white coats and carry stethoscopes.

But the outfits weren’t the only part that made me anxious.

Seven Casti were visible, but I counted at least another ten more with my radar. They were out of sight, behind the other shutter door and the adjacent walls.

“There’s more of them out of sight,” I told Nai. “A lot more.”

We were twenty-one strong. Twenty-two if you counted me in a fight. I couldn’t be sure how many of them were armed, but we seemed to outnumber them if things went poorly.

“I know,” Nai said, and I realized I hadn’t been keeping up my cascade. Sending it into the floor revealed that Nai’s cascade spread downward through the vehicle into the ground. She must have been spreading it out into the ground around us, figuring out where people were standing. In fact, her cascade could fill so much volume, if she stretched it properly, she could easily get it to reach past the doors.

“Are they here to fight?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “We showed up in force so they’re taking precautions, but I don’t think they’ll shoot first.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, relaxing.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous,” Nai pointed out.

“True, but if they’re not shooting first, and we’re not shooting first, then I’m pretty sure that means no one will shoot anyone. Barring a third party, at least,”

“Just stay here,” Nai said. “Nemuleki and I will sort out whatever this is.”

She grabbed one of the handheld radios and handed it to me before grabbing one and clipping it to her harness.

It was, I thought, the first time I’d seen Nai carry a gun. And very much like a human, she carried it under her armpit in a holster. She flung her Coalition-black poncho on and exited our vehicle, walking up to the welcoming committee. Nemuleki got out of the other car carrying a heavy clamshell case and the two of them stood opposite the seven.

Nai spoke first, and to my surprise I could hear her even from inside the vehicle. She must have secured the broadcast button on her radio so we could hear what was said.

“What’s the deal here, Director?” Nai started. “You had notice we were coming, so I’m very confused.”

“The notice I received was vague and indefinite. It only requested First Contact protocols, but that’s not the point,” the Casti in the middle said. “We hear that our labs might have been used to make a bio-agent that targets Vorak, and then we hear a Coalition group is coming for First Contact, and then a fully armed platoon shows up! Help me understand, Adept, because it seems like you came here prepared for an armed assault on an Organic Authority facility.”

“We’re not here for any bio-agent,” Nai insisted. “We’re here in force because the Red Sails attempted to kill a First Contact after it escaped confinement a few months ago.”

“Korbanok…” the Director breathed. “You’ve held a First Contact without quarantine for seven months? Without any evaluation? This entire planet could be exposed to any number of inconceivable pathogens. Why wasn’t the subject presented earlier?”

“The Vorak attacked Demon’s Pit trying to get to the alien. They were repelled but it was deemed to be too great a security risk to move him until now. First Contact procedures are a little pointless if the First Contact dies. We did not do nothing,” Nai asserted, nodding to Nemuleki.

She popped open the clamshell she’d been carrying, showing a stack of medical documents Dyn had compiled. All about me.

“Our physician determined that there was virtually no risk of ecohazard, nor that the First Contact was likely in significant danger,” Nemuleki said. “We’re here to confirm those findings are accurate.”

“I do not appreciate this show of force,” the Director said. “These are baser threats and I do not intend to deliver a bioweapon to you.”

“We’re not here for any bioweapon,” Nai said. “Only the First Contact.”

“Then where is it?” he snapped.

“‘It’… is in one of the vehicles,” I said pressing the radio’s button.

The Director’s eyes narrowed at Nai. He might not have heard me very well. The radio was still under her poncho.

“Not even in a quarantine…” he muttered. “This is a pointless exercise if we don’t actually see the specimen.”

“This specimen is rather wary,” I said. “The last time aliens did invasive medical testing on me, they didn’t ask. And I couldn’t really object since I didn’t speak Vorak then…still don’t I suppose. The point is, the only aliens to treat me halfway decently have been the Coalition. They saved my life when the Vorak tried to kill me.”

“Do I look Vorak to—” he began. But he cut himself off. He wore a pained expression for only a moment.

He seems frustrated…

“…Regardless of anything the Vorak have done…” he said, forcing calm into his voice, “this is not a Vorak facility. The Organic Authority is not at war with the Coalition. The Organic Authority doesn’t go to war! You’ve come here ready to assault this facility, and I won’t pretend that this is appropriate.”

“I’m not going anywhere without allies to defend me,” I said plainly.

“I was serious when I said Coalition personnel weren’t being admitted currently. They can come back in a few days and be admitted when we’ve sorted this bio-weapon business,” the Director said.

The Director, funnily enough, was looking right at my vehicle. He was presumably just guessing that I was in the same one Nai had been inside. Even though it was a correct presumption, I so badly wanted to say that I was in a different vehicle or that he wasn’t looking at the right one.

I just wanted to see if he’d change which car he fixated on.

But pranking any official like that was a terrible, uncircumspect idea. Much less one like this. Bioweapons made for serious conversations, and he sure seemed resolute.

Which meant one of two things.

Either he really was resolute...

Or he wasn’t.

“…That’s a shame, but I’m not willing to consent to any medical testing without allies present,” I said. “Sorry to have wasted your time, Nai. We came all this way for nothing.”

I couldn’t describe the gratitude I felt when Nai turned her back on the Director. The best way to demonstrate you were willing to walk away?

Walk away.

Nemuleki hesitated to follow for a second, but the moment she turned to leave too, the Casti folded.

“You can’t leave!” the Director protested. “First Contact procedures must be observed. It’s bad enough a quarantine couldn’t be kept, but there can be no delaying epidemiological risk assessments.”

“Wholeheartedly, I agree,” I told him. “That’s why it’s such a shame. We’ll have to go to another borough. This place might be the biggest and best spot, but it can’t possibly be the only bio lab on this planet.”

Funny thing was, this wasn’t even a bluff. If they wanted me to go inside that facility with no allies, they were crazy.

We really weren’t here for any bioweapon, so if the Green Complex couldn’t accommodate us because of it, so be it.

“…Two!” the Director attempted. “It could be admitted with two guards…”

Nai and Nemuleki both stopped. It was the start of negotiation.

Except I wasn’t happy. Because the Director was lowballing, badly. I was far from being an expert in any kind of security, but I had been living in a very rigorously secured Coalition facility for months now. I wasn’t going completely in the dark.

Two guards were roughly equivalent to no one at all. The smallest patrol unit when Casti soldiers had gone out into the Demon’s Pit borough had been 4. When I’d gone off base to help with the bunker, Serral had sent more than a dozen.

Which meant that there was something extra going on here.

Two wasn’t just a lowball figure, it was blatantly unreasonable to me, and I was the one being guarded. The Director was hiding something, and there were only a handful of things that he would think to hide from strangers like the Coalition and aliens like me.

There was something I thought I detected on my radar, the barest faint trace at the very edge…

I weighed how much time it would take me to modify my radar’s shape to reach a little further. The one tradeoff of developing my psionic toolbox as much as I had was the flexibility it cost my more complicated creations. There was less metaphorical ‘space’ to reformat the denser work on the fly.

I decided it would take too long. Which meant the only way I could check a little further with my radar was by physically moving forward.

There was no confirmation…but this wasn’t something I was willing to gamble on a negative. Better to check and be wrong than the other way around. So if I couldn’t go to it, then maybe I could get it to come closer to me.

“Before you try meeting him in the middle, Nai,” I said, “there’s Adepts working for the Organic Authority right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought. I figured there was no way every single Farnata and Vorak Adept worked for the Coalition or one of the Assembly’s fleets. So it shouldn’t have been any surprise to find out there’s an Adept at this facility.”

Nai and Nemuleki both tensed as they followed my line of reasoning. Not enough to alert the Organic Authority security, but enough for me to notice.

“So please, Director,” I guessed. “Tell me why you’re keeping an Adept out of sight?”

Nai and Nemuleki both tensed, ready to fight.

The Casti’s face went slack, and the four security guards almost reached for their weapons.

“Stay easy…” a voice called from behind the massive shutter door. “No need to fight…”

It was at the very edge of my radar, in the least precise band. But it was unmistakably there, the faint buzz of an active Adept. And the Director had kept it out of sight, so it must have been a Vorak.

The Adept plodded out. Unlike the other fearsome Adepts I’d come across; this one didn’t wear the strange orange armor. This one instead wore a very plain taupe colored cross between a jumpsuit and a coverall. It gave off a disarming vibe, which only made me more paranoid. In fact, this Vorak barely registered at all on radar. It wasn’t really that fearsome.

In fact, they weren’t even armed.

“I didn’t want to get shot on sight,” the Vorak said, “but I’m unarmed—not a threat.”

“That means less than nothing coming from an Adept,” I said.

“Fair enough,” they conceded. “But I showed myself. Any chance you would too?”

“You and the facility Director here keep seeming like you want me in increasingly vulnerable positions,” I accused. “I’m not a fan.”

“It’s for verification,” the Vorak said. “The facility surveillance had you on camera from more than a kilometer away, it doesn’t seem likely, but you could be an elaborate fake First Contact.”

“And we’re just not going to say anything productive until everyone here knows I’m an alien?”

“It would do a great deal to convince me you’re not here to take delivery of a bioweapon,” the Vorak said.

“…Alright,” I said. “Nai, if they tried to kill me or something, what would you do?”

She didn’t say a word, only conjuring a spark of vorpal fire at her fingertip for a moment.

“Message received,” the Vorak said. “I just want to see the alien.”

I slowly opened the car door and stepped out.

All eyes on me were suddenly wide. I could see the situation hit home for a couple of them. Whatever war or problem was unfolding in the cosmos, they were still floored for a moment to see me in person.

“Not a hoax,” I said, deciding to walk closer.

“We really aren’t here for any bioweapon,” Nemuleki said.

“Your turn to explain yourself, Director,” Nai said.

Except the Vorak did instead.

“It’s that same bioweapon!” they exclaimed. I hadn’t heard a Vorak voice in months, and I’d never really held a conversation with a Vorak before. So, I realized I had no idea if this one was male or female. I’d read about Sendin Marfek after the fact, but I didn’t have any clues to read into this one’s voice.

Nai and I stared at the uniformed Vorak hostilely, though I saw it wasn’t wearing a Red Sails getup. The black and white swirling patch on its shoulder confirmed it.

The Vorak continued. “It’s why the dear Director is so wary of you. I don’t think he’s really thought this through, though. Because from where I’m standing it looks like everyone involved managed to look guilty by accident.”

“You aren’t part of the Red Sails,” I said, not quite following.

“I am Umtane Fromil, Tashi in the Deep Coils, and you are the esteemed Torabin,” the Adept said easily before turning toward me, “and how very rude of the Director because that makes you…unintroduced.”

He spoke oddly enough that it took me a second to realize he’d prompted me.

“…I’m Caleb Hane,” I said. “And I was abducted from my home planet.”

The Casti, including the facility Director, looked shocked at my claim, but the Vorak practically beamed at me. It was like he hadn’t even heard all of what I’d said. “Incredible, dyad nomenclature. Is one name personal and the other connective?”

I frowned, consulting Nai with a glance.

“Personal name or surname,” she clarified quietly.

“…That’s correct,” I answered, intentionally trying to be obfuscating.

“What did you mean, we’ve all managed to look guilty, Rak?” Nai asked.

“It’s the bioweapon,” he repeated, pivoting topics easily. “From where the Director is standing, it looks like an armed force is here to retrieve a weapon that’s a rather egregious violation of the Organic Authority’s principle charter. Not only does the weapon pose a grave threat of massive scope and a destabilization of warfare, but it also has the potential to be supremely shameful for the organization itself. Could you imagine if a Lestrazine weapon was developed in an Organic Authority lab? To say nothing if it were actually used…”

I did not miss that both Nai and Nemuleki went utterly still for a moment at the word ‘Lestrazine.’

“Bad?” I asked.

They both nodded.

“What has you so convinced, Director?” Nemuleki asked.

Before the Casti could answer, Umtane did.

“I convinced him,” the Vorak said. “I’m an actuarial analyst and in my work, I’ve found rather strong evidence such a weapon has been, or is about to be, developed on these premises.”

“You could be lying,” Nai pointed out.

“Yes, I could be!” Umtane said. “But isn’t that what makes this so incredible? You could be lying too. But since I know I’m not lying, I’m at least willing to wager…that you aren’t lying either.”

I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Because, and please correct me if I’m wrong, Caleb Hane,” he continued, “you have stealthily arrived at a borough under Vorak occupation to receive premium medical care only to discover a Vorak agent waiting for you. And even though I’m not in the Red Sails, I have read some of the classified reports, heard the rumors…is it true you killed Sendin Marfek?”

“No,” I answered, but an instant too quickly. I saw the doubt cement behind those tri-part pupils that I’d managed to avoid for so long.

“Immaterial,” Umtane dismissed, “the point being, I think it’s possible, even probable, that none of us are here for the nefarious purposes anyone else might suspect us of.”

“So?” Nai pressed.

“So, Director,” Umtane said, turning to the Casti. “I’ve changed my mind. You don’t need to bar Coalition personnel. Let Caleb Hane have his protection. Neither I nor my staff intend to attack him, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“If the Coalition has commissioned a bioweapon I do not intend for a platoon to traipse around my facility!” the Director said, trying to roar.

“…He does have a point, Torabin, you have twenty-one guns with you. I have only my three staff and myself. I’m of two minds right now…if it were a controllable number, I don’t think we’d have a problem. But a controllable number doesn’t exactly protect Caleb Hane…”

“Two,” the Director repeated. “Two soldiers can enter. No more.”

“No chance,” I said. “We wouldn’t even be able to sleep in shifts.”

“But one of those two would obviously be the Torabin,” the Director retorted. “You’ll just have to live with being outnumbered. I won’t even risk the chance of the Coalition running amok here.”

“Torabin,” Umtane said, still deep in thought. “What you said earlier, ‘myself included.’ Do you mean that?”

Nai muttered a single word under her breath, “Hivivi…” before saying, louder, “…I do.”

“Would you certify such?”

Nai looked thoughtfully, “…yes. You would do the same?”

“I’m not quite as recognizable as the mighty Torabin, but of course.”

“A reasonable number then,” Nai said.

“Four,” Umtane tried.

“Twelve.”

The Director interrupted furiously, seeing the negotiation’s direction, “I am not admitting eight armed Coalition soldiers while there might be a bioweapon on the premises!”

Nai and Umtane barely heard him, “Eight?” she offered.

“Eight,” he agreed warily.

“Then it seems we’re not fighting today after all,” she said.

“A good thing too,” Umtane mused. “I would lose.”

“Now hear me!” the Director roared again, a bit more properly this time. “I don’t care that you have changed your mind, Tashi Umtane! There will not be eight soldiers. The Organic Authority is a neutral party, and I will not risk the organizations neutrality while a weapon of genocide is unconfirmed.”

“It’s the Coalition and the Vorak coming to an agreement,” I frowned. “I don’t know how much more neutral you could get.”

“Let the eight in,” Umtane advised. “Because if they are here for the bioweapon, they would just come back next time with more. And they wouldn’t be nice about it.”

“And we’re not here for any bioweapon anyway,” Nemuleki repeated.

“I’m willing to publicly say so,” Nai pointed out.

“And if that’s the case…” Umtane grinned maniacally, “then surely the Torabin would be willing to aid in investigating and locating it too?”

Nai nodded slowly.

“If you turn us away, we really can just take Caleb to another facility. We really aren’t here for any weapon, so it makes no difference to us.”

Defeated, the Director looked between the three flavors of aliens arguing against him. Four, if you included me.

“…Eight,” he conceded, “including the Caleb Hane.”

That was fair.

·····

Nai, Tasser, and Nemuleki were all obvious shoo-ins, and since that was the case, I left the specifics of who else would enter to the mission commanders.

Nai and Nemuleki were good matches for each other. I’d been there when they first met, and that hadn’t been that long ago. So it was a little surprising to see them cooperate so easily.

Then again, while Tasser and I had been watching out for each other’s lives on a frozen mountainside, Nai and Nemuleki had been too.

It quickly became apparent that who to leave outside was a far more important question than who to bring in.

Because even if Umtane was being cordial, I didn’t believe for a second there weren’t more Vorak in play. And from the start, our big concern had been getting through whatever Vorak stopped us from leaving.

The fact that there was already a Vorak inside was… very unexpected.

It meant whoever we left outside had the thoroughly unenviable job of being ready for when Vorak presence in the borough responded to ours.

In the end, they picked the soldiers most familiar with me. Or at least it seemed like it. They didn’t say anything outright, but it didn’t strike me as a coincidence that I knew the names of everyone but one.

Rahis Tasser, Nemuleki, & Nai were joined by Loths Corphica & Letrin, and Laths Adden & Wurshken—who was the only Casti I didn’t already know, at least in passing.

The other fourteen Casti, only one of whose names I knew—Grami, drove away in three of the four vehicles we’d come in. Tasser said it would be tricky for them to keep a low profile, but not impossible.

Our job was here, inside.

“How soon can we send an update to Ase Serralinitus?” Nemuleki asked.

“Unless we want to use the facility’s equipment, we would have to have our group outside assemble our portable array,” Nai said. “It could take a day or two just to find a safe spot to transmit from.”

Nemuleki grimaced. “The facility equipment is no good, at least not for anything critical. That Vorak will know if we try to broadcast anything. This is a disaster! How could they have known we were coming?”

The eight of us were sitting in the room that the facility Director had reserved for us. Thinking about the Green Complex as a very large research hospital, it seemed like someone had decided we would stay in patient rooms. Or rather just one large patient room. Four very nice hospital beds were spaced regularly in the room with an adjoining lavatory.

It was what I imagined an apartment would look like if you shoved it inside a hospital.

We’d brought in crates of supplies from the vehicle, but the Director had insisted the Coalition soldiers leave their weapons outside the facility.

The Casti in charge of this place had become a bit less frazzled as the situation unfolded. He hadn’t been very convincing the first few times he put his foot down outside, but Umtane and (as I learned) his Vorak hadn’t been armed, since nobody but security was allowed to carry weapons.

Adepts like Nai and Umtane were a bit of an exception, but both were still disarmed of conventional weapons.

The Director had made one thing clear: there would be no fighting. He’d promised to make it his personal mission to publicly destroy anyone who violated the terms of his invitation.

Which was fine by me, and apparently Nemuleki and Nai were similarly convinced. Even if the Deep Coils were one of the fleets at war with the Coalition, fighting them here would anger the Organic Authority. And it turns out no one was willing to risk that.

“It seems likely that we can use the Complex comm equipment as long as we keep it simple. Even if Umtane has a listening device in place, as long as we don’t send any information he doesn’t already know we have, we can at least deliver an update,” Nai said.

Even if micro-electronics weren’t feasible for alien science, the concept of subtle eavesdropping was not unheard of in Adept science. The first thing Nai had done when we’d been shown to these lodgings was flood her tactile cascade through every solid thing in the room, examining the entire space for bugs. She’d had me spot check areas that she wasn’t precise enough to examine, but between the two of us we found nothing.

“We’re going to have to split up if we want to get anything done,” Nemuleki said.

“Tasser will stick with Caleb,” Nai said. “Neither of you let the other out of your sight.”

“Got it,” I said, and Tasser nodded.

“You’re probably going to need to be around him too,” Nemuleki pointed out. “That Vorak is going to be angling for Caleb.”

“I’m not so sure,” Nai said. “I don’t think he’d be willing to publicly certify a record like that if he were.”

“His fleet still has deniability though,” Nemuleki said. “If he goes back on his word, it only makes him look bad and the rest of the Rak will disavow him afterward and Caleb will either be dead or captured by them.”

Nai actually gave a soft laugh. “You’re a true believer, Nemuleki. Maybe more than anyone else here. But even if you were willing to be disavowed to protect the interests of your fleet, it doesn’t mean Umtane himself necessarily would. No, I think his actions agree with his words.”

Nemuleki was confused by what her co-commander meant, but Corphica followed her reasoning.

“You were very insistent in your wording…” she realized. “You only said we weren’t here for any bioweapon. But just because we aren’t…”

“…doesn’t mean there isn’t one.” Nemuleki realized. “Umtane might actually be telling the truth.”

“He might not be too,” Nai said. “But a Lestrazine weapon is too dangerous a possibility to ignore. I really will look into it with him.”

“What exactly is Lestrazine?” I asked.

Adden was the one to answer, apparently knowing a little more biology, “Lestrazines,” he corrected. “They’re a type of bacteria that can easily carry other biological agents. They can be theoretically used as a foundation and delivery mechanism for customized biological weapons.”

“How customizable?”

“Well the worst-case scenario is a grim one: someone spreads a plague that’s transmittable by any organism but only targets certain species. The scary part is the timetable. Most strains can spread and stay dormant for months, with no one the wiser.”

“I know if you can get a sample of the strain before it starts spreading through organisms, they’re supposed to be easy to clear,” Nemuleki said.

Adden gave a very forced nod. It was not a practiced movement for him. “That’s true, but it tends to favor whoever creates them. It means whoever makes the weapon is usually the only one capable of stopping it.”

“So how likely is it that [Mister] Umtane is telling the truth, that there really is a weapon like that being made here?” I asked.

No one met each other’s eyes. The problem was glaring. If this was a weapon the Vorak were worried about, then it stood to reason that the Coalition would be the ones to benefit from it.

“What are the odds, Nai?” I asked. “Seems like you probably know Admiral Laranta best out of all of us. Would she send us here, knowing a bioweapon was being commissioned?”

“…No,” she said. “Because it’s being developed in an Organic Authority lab. That’s outright insane. Whoever made it is acting on their own and flagrantly against the interests of not only the Coalition but everyone in the star system.”

“Mat Muanim?” Nemuleki asked.

Nai nodded, and the rest of my Coalition allies gave a grimace.

Tasser saw fit to fill me in. “It’s a word for ‘extremist,’ ” he said, “one of the reasons the Coalition is popular enough to exist is, on the whole, we’re deliberate and careful. We abide by the same rules that the Vorak do, and consequently even when there’s a war on, no one is throwing meteors at enemy bases or supporting colonies.”

“Extremists…” I muttered. “So, I bet not everyone is happy with a war that stays inside the lines…”

“There’s a few dozen of them in every colony, and Yawhere is no exception. But for the most part they’re not big enough to get anywhere. They speak loudly and aggressively, but they’re not very big. They don’t have the resources to actually do much harm very often,” he said.

“But if one of them has infiltrated this facility,” Nemuleki said, “what’s the merit in trying to make a weapon like that?”

“Korbanok,” Nai said. “The pieces are still falling, but it has the chance to be a turning point. If someone wanted to try and force the Coalition’s hand, escalate the violence to force the Vorak out…”

“Now would be the time to try,” Nemuleki said.

For a few moments, everyone sat in grave silence. Although Tasser’s expression didn’t seem as dark.

“Even so,” Nemuleki said, “I think it’s a mistake to assume that Umtane is being completely honest. If we take that risk, and we’re wrong…you’re the one who would pay for it, Caleb.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “I gave that some thought on the way here. When we were running from the Vorak after we first landed, we only really saw those four Adepts. No one else, not even ordinary soldiers.”

“They were probably the only forces the Rak could mobilize at the time,” Tasser reminded me. “Nai dropped a mountain behind us.”

I nodded again, “I know. But I think it explains why they might have been trying to kill me so badly. A team stuck in the mountains, on its own like that? Even if they were Adepts, it’s a tall order to track, find, and kill anyone. Much less a never-before-seen alien.”

“So?” Nemuleki asked.

“So, what’s the one thing that would be harder than killing me in a circumstance like that? The one appealing outcome that they can’t realistically pursue, because they don’t have the Vorak to pull it off?”

“…Capturing you,” Tasser said, right on the money. “You think the Vorak won’t try to kill you, they’ll want to snatch you back.”

“Yup, and I think that can let us get one move ahead of them.”

Nai leaned forward, “How?”

“You’re not going to like it,” I said.

She connected the dots.

“Something psionic?”

I nodded.

She made a sour face, but met my eyes. “What’s the level of risk?”

“Something going wrong?...Six in ten. Chances I can fix it if it does? Nine in the same.”

“Alright, fine. Before I change my mind. What is it?”

“This,” I said, and held up the radio she’d handed me earlier.

She frowned, uncomprehending for a moment. The look on her face made me grin. Oh, this was going to be great.