CHAPTER SIX | YUKETIS BETA

  84 hours until Contact, 29 days until Convergence

  ‘Much to our chagrin, the astronauts of the 1960s were not the first humans to venture into space. Centuries earlier, we had caught the attention of an inquisitive breed of extraterrestrial—some of whom were prepared to defy galactic law in their obsessive quest for knowledge. The result was a far-flung company of foundlings, neither wholly human nor truly alien, suspended between Earth’s ancestral familiarity and a galaxy of infinite possibilities.’

  – from ‘Humanity Before Convergence’ by Laithan Shah

  Yuketis Beta was a world teetering on the edge of habitability. Tidally locked to its red-dwarven host, its near side was dominated by an untouchable desert, scorched clean by relentless exposure to the star’s heat. Turned from the light, the planet’s far side fared no better, culminating in a frozen wasteland of ceaseless darkness.

  Only along the terminator line—the twilight ring between blistering day and freezing night—was a tenuous version of life possible.

  As the starship Astraea lensed back into existence, Vahril Kantus, Honoured Delegate within the Kessian Assembly of Allied Planets and chief minister for the Galactic Advancement of Science and Technology, peered down at the two-faced planet. It came as no surprise that the smuggler had ended up here. Purchased by a planet-cracking conglomerate twenty cycles ago, the fringe world had become a haven for the forsaken and dishonest alike, its biospheric shortcomings sparing it from the heavy KAAP presence felt on other worlds.

  Following the planet’s dusk belt, the Astraea shuddered as it sliced into the upper atmosphere, its leading edges ablaze with atmospheric friction. The deeper they descended, the harsher the conditions became. Caught between the superheated air at the planet’s substellar point and the freezing weather systems sweeping in, Vahril had to work harder than usual to maintain his world-weary look of indifference as the ship was battered by a planet-wide hurricane.

  ‘Structural integrity holding,’ the helmsman felt the need to announce as he flattened out the starship’s dive. ‘Thirty seconds from spaceport.’

  Clouds parted to reveal an extensive tributary network branching across the planet’s surface. Like its atmosphere, Yuketis Beta kept its water cache in constant motion. Liquid meltwater—funnelled across the twilight boundary by the milder air currents near the night side—would evaporate upon reaching the planet’s fiery periphery. The resulting vapour was then carried back to the colder hemisphere, where it froze into ice, ready to begin the cycle anew.

  Hydrologic cycles like these were not uncommon across the galaxy, but without a stable, all-encompassing climate, they rarely supported the evolution of complex organisms. Anything that managed to spark into life within the temperate zones risked being boiled alive or frozen solid if carried too far by the circulating currents. Despite these limitations, Yuketis Beta had still made a minor contribution to the galaxy’s collective biodiversity, primarily through plant-based structures. Coloured black to absorb the faint light of their weakened star, they hunkered within the fissured waterways crisscrossing the terminator line, their deep roots anchoring them against the eternal winds. There was some evidence of freshwater invertebrates living within these vegetational strands, but most KAAP zoologists had long abandoned the thought of exploring them further; collating the galaxy’s biotic wealth was already too monumental a task, and the colony’s mining pollution had likely already eradicated whatever may have once been worth investigating.

  Lowering its landing gear, the Astraea wobbled uncertainly in the turbulent crosswinds as it approached a vacant landing pad. After touchdown, an attending team of autonomous mechanoids rushed forward, fastening magnetised restraints to the ship’s undercarriage to guard against the risk of a rogue updraft. Such precautions were standard practice on a world where wind speeds regularly tipped two hundred miles per hour. For its own protection, much of the colony had been built underground, nested within Yuketis Beta’s honeycombed network of canyons and hollows—natural formations carved over millions of cycles by the slow, erosive will of wind and water. Harnessing the planet’s extreme temperature differentials, the subterranean habitats were powered mainly by horizontal-axis wind farms, their spinning blades swarming along the surface of the twilight belt. Even the colonists’ artificial day-night cycle had been carefully engineered, providing a simulated circadian rhythm in a world of eternal twilight.

  As the landing pad descended into a hangar bay, Vahril shuddered in the presence of such blatant artifices, suddenly yearning for the natural virtues of his homeworld over four thousand galactic units away. ‘Wait here,’ he said once the pad reached its terminus. ‘I will go alone.’

  The helmsman nodded. ‘By your command, Your Eminence.’

  Rising from his seat aboard the command deck, Vahril took a moment to admire his tall reflection in a nearby vanity panel. He smoothed the creases from his long, figure-fitting robe, its standing collar adorned with finely stitched insignias befitting of his station. He soon became aware of the attention he was drawing from his subordinates, though he didn’t have the mind to scold them. After all, wasn’t it the nature of the Kessian Greys to covet perfection?

  Blinking against the flat-white lights of the hangar bay, Vahril emerged from the ship’s interior, stepping out on sinuous, digitigrade limbs. At the bottom of the loading ramp, a nervous gathering of the colony’s higher-ups had assembled to receive him, the arrival of a KAAP starship clearly causing a stir. Glancing down at the motley assortment of colours, builds and taxonomic classes, Vahril swallowed the urge to gag; the thought of residing on a planet with such genetic disarray made his stomach churn.

  ‘Your Eminence,’ one of the colonists greeted—a Fornax, his hulking frame almost touching the floor in a somewhat excessive display of deference. Vahril winced as his cochlear universal translator strained to interpret the deep, burbling resonance. ‘What an unexpected—’

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ Vahril interrupted coolly. He had seen this play too many times before: while superiors distracted visiting officials with flattery and guile, subordinates would rush to bury any evidence that could incriminate the colony of galactic wrongdoing. ‘A human.’

  The alien’s posture relaxed. Through his own internal translator, he had picked up from Vahril’s tone that this visit was not part of any official KAAP business. ‘We have a lot of humans here, Your Eminence. Could you be more specific?’

  ‘He pilots an Ahysmian light freighter. The Monkfish.’

  The Fornax blinked up at him with large amber eyes. ‘Oh—right. Him.’ He glanced at his associates, motioning them to stand down, before making a beckoning gesture. ‘This way, if you please.’

  On a world proportionately larger than his own, Vahril found the gravity punishing as he followed the Fornax from the hangar bay into the colony’s internal network of access corridors. Fearing he might be forced to walk on all fours like a primitive, Vahril sent a neural command to activate the fortifying splints moulded to the lightweight bones of his lower limbs. He resented having to rely on such cybernetic enhancements—a tacit admission of evolutionary deficiencies—but they enabled him to maintain the gracefulness of his gait and keep his head held high above the ground.

  Below, an expression that Vahril could only attribute to a smile had appeared on the Fornax’s pulpous features.

  ‘Would you like me to summon a transport, Your Eminence?’

  Vahril bristled at the suggestion. Clearly, the colonist had heard the tell-tale hum of activating prosthetics. ‘No, thank you.’

  He wouldn’t be caught dead in some colonist buggy.

  They walked in silence for a time, nearing one of the colony’s auxiliary habitats. ‘You mentioned you have many humans residing here,’ Vahril said, deciding to fill the lull. ‘Did the Liberations affect business?’

  The Fornax hesitated, clearly weighing his response.

  ‘Humans have always been an integral part of our workforce.’ The usual, polished script. ‘And it’s only fair that they’re compensated for their time.’

  Amused, Vahril pressed a little further. ‘Any clones? Fabricants?’

  ‘Purebloods, obviously,’ the Fornax answered—too defensively. ‘Though I heard that many of the manufactured stocks disappeared during the Liberations. Who knows if some of them ended up here?’ He shot Vahril a sideways glance. ‘Your kind favoured them for their resourcefulness, after all.’

  Even filtered through a cochlear translator, Vahril caught the whiff of disdain. ‘Resourceful but dangerous,’ he reminded. ‘If you uncover such a human, regardless of their strengths, they must be sterilised. We cannot risk any further degradation to the gene pool.’

  ‘Of course,’ the Fornax said. ‘But—if I may—what’s so special about these humans that such countermeasures are necessary?’

  It was a question that had fuelled scientific debate for over three hundred cycles. On the face of it, the species was not that extraordinary: a warm-blooded taxonomy of arboreal descent, walking-talking sacks of flesh no different to a hundred other sentient lifeforms scattered across the galaxy.

  And yet—somehow—a few among their number had inherited a genetic quirk that bordered on the impossible. So much work had gone into harnessing it—refining it. Now, the few who had survived were unravelling to the point of non-viability. The only choice left was to recover a piece and start over.

  Vahril only hoped he wasn’t already too late.

  ‘Your Eminence?’

  Vahril was reminded to look down at his escort.

  ‘Are you much acquainted with human culture?’

  The Fornax chuckled. ‘I’m not even much acquainted with my own. My genitors sent me to be hatched on the first germ-ship out of Ierohpei.’

  ‘I see,’ Vahril said, feigning interest. The propagative rituals of the Fornax had not been the intent of his enquiry. ‘Well, humanity—Earth, I should say—has a particularly intriguing legend, claiming that, many cycles ago, they reaped the blood of a god into a sacred cup.’

  ‘A cup?’ the Fornax repeated. ‘That’s what the fuss is all about? Divine tableware?’

  Vahril smiled. Like so many others, the Fornax had taken the story’s context a little too literally. ‘I suppose—put that way—it does sound rather ludicrous.’

  The Fornax let out a coarse, rumbling laugh. ‘You Greys sure love obsessing over the past. Not like we Fornax. We keep our eyes on the future.’

  And that is why you will always remain a lesser species, Vahril thought, not without satisfaction.

  Their journey ended in front of a large, semicircular doorway. Beyond, the raucous sounds of Earth music and boisterous merriment spilt into the corridor. Vahril paused, his attention drawn to the distorted timbres and driving rhythmic patterns. He recognised the song—one from a categorisation that the humans called “rock”—and, judging from the face his Fornax escort was making, it had not yet captured the adoration of the wider galactic community. ‘You’ll find the human inside,’ he said, wincing against the noise.

  ‘A bar?’ Vahril queried, arching a hairless brow.

  The Fornax shrugged. ‘As you see, Your Eminence.’

  ‘I thought such establishments were banned by the First World?’

  ‘What they don’t know won’t hurt them.’

  Vahril looked back to the doorway. ‘Very well. Lead the way.’

  The Fornax gave a despairing look. ‘In... in there, Your Eminence? I—I’d rather not.’

  ‘Come,’ Vahril urged, his voice smooth... insistent. ‘You asked why we Greys consider the humans so special. Where better to glimpse it for yourself than within their natural habitat?’

  * * *

  Anthony Voss knew his cards were shit, but if life had taught him anything, it was that victory didn’t always come down to the hand you were dealt. So, when the first of the community cards was revealed, he raised the pot by a hundred KAAP credits, placing a debit disc onto the table with firm assurance. The bluff had succeeded in scaring off most of the competition. Only the young, fair-featured mineral haulier, Leto Fenn, remained to take on the challenge.

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  Under the gaze of a growing crowd of spectators, the dealer flipped the next community card: the Eight of Spades.

  ‘Three hundred,’ Anthony announced, placing down three additional debit discs.

  ‘Call,’ Leto replied, matching the bet.

  The dealer leaned forward to unveil the final card: the Seven of Spades.

  Out of discs, Anthony retrieved a fat cache coil from his pocket.

  ‘Two thousand.’

  Leto looked down at the coil with wide eyes. It was probably the largest chunk of credits on a single device that he had ever seen, equivalent to ten weeks of hard labour down in the mines. Anthony watched gleefully as the youngster weighed his options, his pale, UV-hungry face furrowed in concentration. To even match the bet would run the risk of losing what remained of his funds, and for an aspiring pilot saving up to escape this boondock of a planet, it was a gamble he proved too unwilling to make. ‘Fold,’ he mumbled, tossing back his cards—the makings of a queen-high flush.

  Anthony sighed as he reached for his winnings. ‘That’s too bad.’ He flipped over his cards—a pitiful pair of threes. ‘I was really rooting for you that time.’

  The encircling crowd burst into laughter as Leto’s jaw dropped.

  ‘You fucking bluffed me, old man?’

  Anthony was in the middle of buying the boy a commiserative drink when the two aliens made their approach. ‘Threk!’ he exclaimed as the Fornax bumbled into view. ‘What the hell are you doing down here? Hey, listen—about that Soma contract—I had no idea those detonators were already rigged to—’

  ‘Quiet, Voss. A minister is here to see you.’

  Towering above everyone else in the bar, the second alien gazed at Anthony with dark, upturned eyes. ‘Chief Minister Vahril Kantus,’ he greeted, extending a three-fingered hand in an unnervingly human-like gesture. ‘A pleasure to meet you.’

  After a deliberate pause, Anthony decided to give in and shake it. All species of the KAAP were welcome here—the disparate human collective had long learnt the benefits of collaboration in this vast and unforgiving galaxy—but the arrival of a Grey—and a chief minister at that—had undeniably soured the mood. Even Leto, too young to have personally experienced the centuries of genetic experimentation and widespread enslavement, looked up at the alien with an expression of utter loathing.

  ‘We don’t get many of your kind out here,’ Anthony said, testing the waters. ‘I must have done something terribly troublesome to have merited a personal visit.’

  Vahril gave a slight shake of his head. Sat atop a long, attenuated neck, it was pale and owl-like, bald as an egg. ‘You are mistaken, Captain. I have come as a friend.’

  Leto took a step forward, fists clenched. ‘Since when do the Greys call themselves our friends? My parents were slaves because of xenos like you!’

  The minister didn’t flinch as he turned to the adolescent. ‘Dear boy.’ He paused to study his somewhat homologous features—a telling sign of clonal ancestry. ‘Without xenos like me, they never would’ve existed.’

  Another pregnant pause. Leto bristled with rage; hands balled into fists. A fellow human placed a hand on his shoulder, likely fearing what his teenage recklessness might provoke. Simpering, the minister turned back to Anthony, who met his gaze with glowering eyes. Between them all, Puma Threk was visibly squirming.

  ‘You’ve come a long way just to argue semantics, Your Eminence,’ Anthony said, his voice almost a growl. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I wish to charter your ship.’

  Anthony skipped a beat—it was not the response he had been expecting. ‘What makes you think I’d ever work for you?’

  The minister took a moment to consider. ‘I believe your people have a saying: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.’

  ‘Poetic.’

  ‘Yet admirably pertinent. As I’ve said, I have come as a friend.’

  ‘That suggests you and I have a common enemy,’ Anthony said, gesturing to the surrounding denizens of the bar. ‘Last I checked, I was friends with everybody.’

  Vahril smirked as the crowd broke into a wave of soft chuckles.

  ‘Even Koenig?’

  The name dropped like a stone into the room’s uneasy quiet. Anthony froze, the humour draining from his face, and—for a moment—he said nothing.

  ‘Threk.’

  The Fornax jumped at the sound of his name.

  ‘Be a dear and fetch His Eminence a drink.’

  * * *

  ‘All right, Minister. I’m listening. What do you want?’

  Vahril looked down at the libation that had been placed in front of him. Black in colour and crowned with a thick layer of foam, it looked to have been concocted from one of the hardy plant species scratching a living on the planet’s surface.

  ‘Well?’ Anthony asked after the minister took a cautious sip. ‘Whaddya think?’

  Pausing to swallow, Vahril used his mouth to aerate the flavours that remained on his tongue. Smooth and creamy, the drink had a very pleasing sweetness. ‘Another success for your species,’ he replied before taking another—more generous—swig.

  Ahead, Anthony frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Vahril took a moment to study the captain. Unlike the youth who had challenged him earlier, Anthony Voss carried no trace of the manufactured bloodlines in his features. Instead, the distinctively deep pigmentation of his skin implied generations of meticulous artificial selection, suggestive of the glamour stocks reared on the homeworld. ‘At last count, there are two hundred and sixteen known sentient species in the galaxy, yet only a handful have achieved first contact. In most cases, they simply lack the technology. For the rest, evolution has... inhibited them.’

  ‘Really?’ Anthony answered dryly, reaching for his own drink.

  ‘Evolution encourages specialisation,’ Vahril said, ‘but nature rewards fluidity. If a species becomes too dependent on a particular environmental arrangement, it has no hope of transcendence. Overwhelmingly, it is only those who react well to change that can grow beyond their limits.’ He stopped to look around the bar. ‘Take humanity, for example. At the time of the Liberations, many feared that—without KAAP’s assistance—your species would struggle to survive. But, in truth, you have surpassed all our expectations.’ He looked back down at his drink. ‘Humans. You don’t just endure. You see the instability of nature as an opportunity rather than a cause for extinction.’

  ‘Wow,’ Anthony smirked, ‘all that from two sips of Beta Black? Didn’t realise the Greys were such lightweights.’

  Vahril permitted himself the smallest of chuckles. ‘Apologies, Captain. Your species has been at the forefront of my research for many cycles. So, to be here—amongst you—it’s all rather exciting.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? Research?’

  ‘In a way. I need you to retrieve something for me.’

  ‘Retrieve what?’

  Vahril stalled. For the first time since his arrival, the gravity of the situation forced him to momentarily contemplate the risks. All he had to dissuade Anthony from blabbing to his fellow ministers was based on a hunch. If that failed, he would be branded a traitor, doomed to spend the rest of his days in a carceral polyp—or worse. ‘There is a research facility on Khioni Sigma. After the Liberations, I moved there to continue my research... unimpeded.’

  Anthony noted the Grey’s hesitation. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Six days ago, the facility’s supervisory AI was hijacked by an anonymous transmission. Twelve of our high-value assets managed to escape in the fallout.’

  ‘These “assets”,’ Anthony queried. ‘They’re humans, aren’t they?’

  Vahril wavered. It had taken the captain no time at all to deduce the particulars. ‘Their base DNA is human, yes. But—whether you’d classify them as such—’

  ‘They’re fabricants?’

  Vahril frowned. ‘I believe the term “hybrid” would be more accurate.’

  The captain huffed in disbelief. ‘Your lot never learn, do they?’

  ‘I’ve broken no laws. They were created before the Liberations.’

  ‘You’re going to sit there and defend yourself on a technicality?’

  ‘I saved them, Captain. Had I not, my associates would’ve long since purged them to save face.’

  ‘Well, clearly,’ Anthony said, ‘they were grateful for your protection, fleeing at the first opportunity and all.’

  Vahril pursed his lips. This human was no fool.

  ‘Still don’t understand why you’d involve me in all this. Sounds like you’d be better off hiring a covert or a hunter-seeker than a smuggler like me.’

  ‘The transmission,’ Vahril reminded. ‘I believe it originated from Earth.’

  Anthony glowered. ‘Wilfred.’

  Vahril gave a silent nod of confirmation.

  ‘Why?’ Anthony asked. ‘Why would he go through all the effort of freeing a bunch of hybrids? What are you not telling me, Minister?’

  Vahril made an involuntary grumble of resistance; the human was teasing more from him than he had initially planned to reveal.

  ‘They’re... descendants.’

  Anthony’s irritation melted to horror. ‘Descendants mixed with what, exactly?’

  ‘I only need you to retrieve one of them,’ Vahril deflected. ‘In return, I will help you protect the girl.’

  The captain’s glass rattled on the table as he set it down too hard. ‘Girl?’ he repeated quickly—too quickly. He bounced between the alien’s large eyes, scrounging for salvage—a sign, a fucking shred of advantage.

  But Vahril Kantus simply watched, the patience of a predator. Eventually, Anthony was forced to cave.

  ‘What girl?’

  * * *

  Puma Threk brooded as a light freighter lifted off from the spaceport. Around him, the colonists manning the flight control deck craned their heads to catch a glimpse of the starship. One of the last surviving examples of Ahysmian astronautical engineering, the Monkfish was a ship like no other; it still irked Puma to no end that she had ended up in the hands of a human. After meeting with Vahril Kantus, Anthony Voss had wasted no time priming her for departure, even buying out young Leto Fenn’s mining contract to serve as a co-pilot. Whatever had roused the smuggler into action, it was big—big enough that Vahril–fucking–Kantus had come to task him personally.

  No doubt, the chief minister was already congratulating himself on weaving his little shroud of mystery. Puma could almost smell the Grey’s smug self-assurance when he dropped him off at one of the colony’s luxury habitats. He must have thought himself incredibly clever, making Puma sit there and watch them discuss business in that noisy bar. The Fornax were well-known for their evolutionary handicap in processing intense auditory stimuli, but—to make up for that biological disadvantage—Puma had long since taught himself to lip-read many of the galaxy’s primary languages. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough to catch the occasional crumb dropped by good old Kessian arrogance.

  Khioni Sigma, Puma pondered, picturing the way the minister’s thin-lipped mouth had shaped the words, his hushed tones drowned out by the surrounding chatter and that odious clamour the humans called “music”.

  Descendants.

  Hooked into the spaceport’s mainframe via a neural link, a nearby operator spoke up. ‘Monkfish, you are cleared for departure. Confirm.’

  The operator never received a reply.

  With a sudden lurch, the Monkfish dropped her stern and punched skyward with a deafening boom.

  Colonists cheered as the entire spaceport rumbled from the noise, watching as Voss commanded the Monkfish to lense into a subspace jump, the planet’s half-light momentarily bending around a spherical distortion of gravitational forces.

  ‘Where are they heading?’ Puma growled, making a mental note to sanction Voss for his theatrics later. A jump like that could’ve shatter-blasted the planet into the next system over.

  Acquiescing to Puma’s command via the spaceport’s central nexus, the operator ran a short-range scan before relaying the data through navigation.

  ‘Their trajectory suggests an exit point outside the allied systems, but I can’t say where exactly.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The operator shrugged. ‘Voss wasn’t exactly forthcoming with his flight plan.’

  ‘Pinpoint it as best you can. Search for habitable worlds within a hundred units.’

  The operator’s eyelids flickered as he executed the command. Sifting through the countless data streams must have been taxing; by the time he had Puma’s answer, beads of sweat were lining the contours of his forehead.

  ‘There’s only one hit, sir. Earth.’

  Puma frowned. Curious.

  ‘But, predicting subspace trajectories isn’t an exact science,’ the operator continued. ‘The Monkfish’s interstellar capabilities are far greater than your average freighter. They could easily make another jump to the outer expanse once they—’

  Puma signalled for silence. The operator was right to be nervous. Following the exposure of heinous genetic experimentation practices and the subsequent liberation of their human slaves, the Honoured Delegates of the Kessian Assembly of Allied Planets had designated Earth—and its neighbouring stars—a “stellar reserve”; a desperate attempt to appease the galactic community and the species they had so shamefully tampered with. Transits—even comm-traffic—were now strictly forbidden within the sector. The KAAP could not risk the indigenous population discovering tangible proof that they were not alone in the galaxy, or—worse—that several generations of their kind were already living out amongst the stars. If the Monkfish were caught near the human homeworld, it wouldn’t take investigators long to figure out her point of origin—or the identities of those who had permitted them to leave.

  ‘Is there... something else I can help you with, sir?’ the operator queried as Puma’s silence stretched on.

  The Fornax cast a cautious look around the room. With the excitement of the Monkfish’s departure fading, many colonists had already returned to their work. ‘What can you tell me about Khioni Sigma?’

  The operator hesitated. ‘It... It’s nothing. A husk world at best.’

  ‘Hmm. Do you know how to access KAAP servers?’

  The operator looked mildly insulted. ‘We all do. How else would we stay one step ahead of those damned—?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Run a search for the word “descendants”. Cross-reference it with any mention of Vahril Kantus.’

  The operator’s eyes began to flicker. ‘I’ve got a hit, sir. An investigative file from the time pre-dating the Liberations. “Project Taweret”.’

  ‘“Taweret”?’ Puma repeated.

  ‘It’s a name for a goddess of childbirth,’ the operator explained. ‘Earth mythology.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  The operator reached deeper into the KAAP’s databanks before pausing to frown. ‘There’s... something, but... most of the data has been encrypted. Hold on. Let me see if I can—’

  Puma blinked as something hot and viscous splashed across his face. Wiping it from his mouth, he tasted something metallic—sweet and coppery. He tried to focus, to identify the colour, but found he couldn’t see anything; the blinding flash just milliseconds before had turned everything into a formless blur. When the screaming started, he called out to the operator but received no answer. Reaching out, Puma’s hands trembled when his scaled fingers touched against the shredded muscles of a headless corpse.

  ‘He... exploded?’ Vahril Kantus asked later over dinner, his black eyes sharp, probing. ‘How?’

  Puma did his best to appear relaxed while sitting shoulder to shoulder with other colonist dignitaries, the minister settled into his temporary apartment as if he were here to stay. ‘Faulty neural link,’ he lied. ‘Diagnostics said it was a disaster waiting to happen.’

  Vahril turned his attention back down to the dinner in front of him. Despite the effort to provide a luxurious meal, he didn’t seem impressed. ‘My condolences, but this sort of thing is not entirely unheard of. A similar thing happened to the Ahysmi. Their neural technology was advanced—credit where credit’s due—but spectacularly flawed. One little rogue piece of code, and their whole network came crashing down. An entire species annihilated in a single instant.’

  ‘Makes me wonder where the rogue piece of code came from,’ Puma countered, the words brazenly reckless. ‘Auph Kessia was at war with them at the time, right?’

  The minister’s lips twitched along the rim of his libation—a glass of Beta Black from the breweries down in the human habitats. Across the table, a fellow colonist shot Puma a wordless stare of horror.

  ‘If you’re referring to the rumour that my people had something to do with the Ahysmian Cascade,’ Vahril said, ‘I can assure those rumours are purely speculative.’

  ‘The eventuality was no less convenient,’ Puma persisted, deciding to resist the minister’s deflection at the growing discomfort of his peers. ‘With the Ahysmi gone, Auph Kessia became the economic powerhouse of the galaxy. It led to the Kessian Empire. The Assembly.’

  Vahril Kantus placed his glass back down on the table. ‘Forgive me, Colonist Threk, but it almost sounds like you believe the birth of our great assembly to be an unfavourable outcome.’

  ‘I just don’t see how the death of an operator links to the Ahysmi.’

  Vahril broke into a smile. ‘I’m merely stating the similarities. “Those who play with fire will often find themselves burned”.’

  The idiom was of Earth origin, the second he had referenced that day. Puma wondered if the Grey was conscious of the irony in using word-wisdoms from a species deemed far less advanced than his own. ‘Are you suggesting this wasn’t an accident?’

  Vahril Kantus stared, his large, almond-shaped orbs reflecting nothing but the void. ‘Perhaps your operator was looking into places he shouldn’t have been. Perhaps he, too, encountered a rogue piece of code.’

  Puma Threk nodded, lifting his drink in the mocked echo of a toast. ‘Then here’s to the sentients far foolhardier than we.’

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