“Babylon should be evacuated.” A researcher from the sub-team tasked with learning about external influences from the object. He swivelled in his chair to address Nirann directly. “The Cradle has a historic integration with the stratum of the biosphere. We still don’t know enough about why this relationship exists - it's too dangerous to have millions of people inside.”

“That is our formal recommendation to the government. It's up to them how to proceed, as it's obviously not in our remit.” Freyr offered, then also turned to Nirann. “Locking down the Vault seems like a good move. But, that is an inflexible solution. How long would it take to reinstate automatic control if we removed it?” Freyr threw the question out to the room, and Dr Wetherall replied.

“Erm, a while? Everything is connected, so it wouldn’t be a case of flicking some switch.”

“So a problem arises if we find one of the Navigator’s colleagues and need to save them as well. Not an insurmountable problem, but one to put in the report.” Freyr kissed her teeth, weighing everything up in her head, arms crossed and brow furrowed.

Vreta’s remark silenced the room. Eventually it was Dr Kim who responded, standing up to one side of the room. “We brought it here foremost to save its life. We’re ensuring its own safety as well as ours by taking protective measures.

“Yes, that is the case from our perspective, but we need to consider the Navigator’s perspective as well.” Vreta responded. “As of yet, we have not established regular communication with the Navigator. We have no way to convey our intentions, nor any guarantees it would believe them if we could. The only thing we have to define our intentions are our actions. I think we need to take care to portray ourselves as allies, not jailers.”

This time, it was Marae who contributed her thoughts. “Then perhaps we should make communication more of a focus? If we can establish regular communication with the Navigator, that would take a lot of this guesswork out of our interactions with it. We could simply tell it what we are doing, and get its feedback and opinions. I would suggest we try more methods of communication, especially if they are more direct than using harnesses to interact with the simulation.”

Vreta nodded in agreement. If they could regularly communicate with the Navigator, that would reduce the chances of misunderstandings. It would not necessarily eliminate them, but it would at least make the risks more acceptable. “If you can do so successfully, then I do believe that would be helpful. The details of how to do so are, naturally, more of your expertise. I can personally be of more help to the people of Babylon, and on that, I do agree with you that the city should be evacuated. Perhaps even more of the planet, but at least the city to start. And I can say that my government agrees. I have been in some communication with Rareth, so I have an idea of my people’s standing on this situation. Evidently, the Rahn’Saki predicted that a refugee crisis could arise from this even during the early stages, and especially after they agreed to help refugees, they have been preparing for this eventuality. We have created prefabricated dwellings, set aside ample food and medicine, found space on a viable world that can sustain the population, and have been preparing ships to assist with transport. We are ready, so the only thing standing in the way of an evacuation now is your government’s approval.”

“We were trying to communicate with the object all through the recoupling. It didn’t respond…” Another researcher replied, ignoring the Rothian’s evacuation assurances. As per usual, Freyr’s eyes were darting all around the room, as they were all sat apart. A fair few sets of eyes landed back on her and Vreta, and she realised they were still waiting for a proper account of what happened inside the Cradle.

“The Navigator, as it's called, did seem more focused on internal struggles when we met it.” Freyr gestured to Vreta. “We know that the Cradle does absorb signals we point at it via the Vault, so it may just be a case of patiently waiting… Vreta’Sori, do you want to go through again what you discussed in your meeting with the entity? There may be something hidden that the wider group will pick up on.”

“Yes, of course.” Vreta responded, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands together. “Just give me a moment to think back…however it interacted with my mind, my implants’ recordings did not capture the meeting. I just need to focus on the details…”

Pausing briefly, Vreta concentrated on visualizing his memories in his mind. “I recall aspects of our conversation. It warned again about the Hegemon. It portrayed them as being exceptionally powerful. ‘Indestructible’, in its words, though I was doubtful of that. Though, I suppose they could legitimately be indestructible to us. They may not be able to be defeated by conventional means. I remember trying to learn more. I questioned the Navigator, asked for proof. It pointed me towards a satellite galaxy of Andromeda. I…don’t know if it ever gave me the exact location of this planet that would hold this proof. I asked it to simply upload the information to my implants, so I may need to sort through the data to see if there was anything it left behind for me.”

As Vreta’s mind sorted through his memories in sequence, he came to a detail that gave him pause for just a moment. His mind had been somewhat muddled before, but this part of his memory was now standing out clearly. “I also remember asking about the Institute. The Cradle Institute; the same organization to which Agent 595 belongs. I asked what it had learned about them, and it told me that the goal of the institute had been to reunite the Navigator and its kind with the Cradle for well over two thousand years.”

Vreta allowed that statement to hang in the air for just a few moments before he continued. “From my knowledge of your history, you were still a pre-FTL species on your own homeworld, fighting with swords and spears at that time. That led me to one of three conclusions. Either the Navigator is lying, Cradle beings have some kind of presence on Earth, or the Institute was not founded by Humans.”

The rest of the conference hall hung on Vreta’s words, including Freyr, who blew softly on her second coffee of the day. When he mentioned the Institute, she glanced through the steam at the black-clad observers standing to one side of the room. She thought they were regarding the Rothian with a silent intensity, hands folded behind their backs.

There was more stunned silence when Vreta had finished, so Freyr bit her lip and jumped in. “Did the Navigator have any more information about where we can find its other colleagues? They may hold more information about the Hegemon, unless they’re in even worse condition.”

“Well hold on, my dear. Isn’t Vreta’Sori suggesting one of them is on Earth? Are you?” Dr Wetherall peered over his AR specs at Vreta. “What you say implies that Humans have somehow come to live in proximity of two alien beings from another galaxy. The odds of that seem rather far fetched, don’t you think?”

Vreta turned towards Dr. Wetherall. “I am implying that there may have been a being related to the Cradle on your homeworld at a point in time roughly two thousand years ago. Whether it is still there, though, I would have no way of knowing. And of course, there are alternative explanations to what the Navigator told me, as I said. But, if there was a Cradle being on your homeworld, then it would not surprise me at all that you find yourself here now. You may have been led here in some way, without your population as a whole knowing. Remember, we found the Navigator on my people’s homeworld, and it claims its kind have seeded life in this galaxy. Had the Navigator not been buried so deep, had it been more accessible to us, we may have found it long ago. In that case, it may have been us that was led to the Cradle.”

For a moment, Vreta rubbed his head, trying to focus on the details of his meeting in the Cradle. Unfortunately, there was nothing that came to mind which could answer Freyr’s question. “I don’t remember it telling me where to find more of its kind. I remember it pointing out a potential location in Andromeda to find evidence of the Hegemon, but nothing about other Cradle beings. It is still possible that it sent me away with the data, though. It could, perhaps, be stored away within my implants. I just need to take some time to go through my data storage and look for unrecorded changes.”

It was not long before Nirann interjected. By the way he had been staring at Vreta, he had been waiting eagerly for him to finish speaking. “That is a good idea. By all means, do that, but…even if it didn’t leave you anything else, we may already have what we need to at least give us a start. Think about it, the Navigator claims his kind are life-seeders, right? We found one on the Rothian homeworld, Outremer had intelligent life before you arrived, even if it didn’t survive to modern day, and now we have information suggesting that there may have been a Cradle being on the Human homeworld at some point in time. Every Cradle being we know of has had some connection not just with life, but with intelligent life. I’d call that a pattern, wouldn’t you? If that pattern holds, then we might find what we’re looking for by searching the homeworlds of known intelligent species. Now that we have mountains of data from our scans of the Navigator’s object, we know what to look for.”

They both made a lot of sense, Freyr thought, as she studied them over the rim of her cup. They hadn’t been involved with the Cradle their whole lives, and so brought a fresh perspective that the Human team evidently were lacking at present. “Hmm, yes. That does make a worrying amount of sense, chaps.” Dr Wetherall took his AR glasses off and began cleaning them on his lab coat.

“That also makes this investigation a lot more complicated.” Dr Kim cut back in. “One doesn’t simply go to Earth and start asking questions. You know how they get - we’d be locked up in some gulag before you can say ‘don’t mention the war!’. Game over for us.”

“We might have more luck with other species first. I seem to remember a widespread on this star map the Navigator showed me…” Freyr closed her eyes and pinched her cheeks together, trying to recall what she’d seen; it was still so hazy. “It was tracking its colleagues before it crashed into Rothia, but there were pieces missing…anyway, my point is the vector could include all the civilisations in our cluster, and more."

“There are innumerable worlds in our galaxy, but not all that many intelligent species.” Marae remarked. “If my husband is correct, and there is a connection to intelligent life, specifically, then we only need to focus our search on their homeworlds. Now that we know what we are looking for, that is not an unreasonable search area. Rothians have spread sensors all across our galaxy listening for signals that would indicate undiscovered civilizations. A few of the species we know of now were discovered in that manner. There are parts of our galaxy isolated enough that civilizations could remain yet undiscovered within them, of course, but we do have a good place to start.”

Nirann clasped his hands together. The body he was using had no capability for facial expression, yet he still managed to convey some sense of slyness to his body language. “And like I said, we do know what we’re looking for now. We have…positive relations with a lot of species out there, to varying extents, especially when it comes to trading. Even your own estranged homeworld. It wouldn’t be that hard to stick a good quality sensor suite into a trading vessel and have it do the scans for us during its usual rounds. The other species out there aren’t as…advanced as either of us, so we should be able to do it without them being any the wiser. Of course, we’d need to involve them if we actually find something, but we could still do this first part ourselves.”

Vreta crossed his arms, slightly narrowing his eyes at Nirann. “I would really rather not choose trickery as our first option. As you said, Nirann, we have spent centuries fostering our relationships with other species. Not all are ‘friends’, or even formal allies, but we are trading partners with nearly every known species, and we have established beyond any doubt that we honor our agreements when we make them. If we make good enough offers to them, we can get them to cooperate diplomatically.”

Freyr sighed. It felt like they were getting ahead of themselves again. “Gentlemen, I don’t believe this is the forum to discuss how we’re going to do things, but rather to establish what we’re going to do.” She looked at the clock - somehow they had been talking for hours already. Freyr hadn’t gotten exactly what she wanted out of the engagement, and suspected part of the reason for that would be all the recent terror and upheaval. People still hadn’t had enough time to synthesise all the information.

“Let's leave it there for today…I think we can all agree that we’ve been through a traumatic experience. So I want people to be kind to each other, and take time out to consider what’s happened objectively.” Freyr slurped her coffee, and met the eyes of some people. You could hear a pin drop in the room.

“We may be standing on the precipice of something beyond even our wildest imaginings. So I also want you all to consider what is best for the people we serve. This is not just about scientific discovery anymore; however vast that opportunity is. Billions of lives are potentially at risk, trillions even. Untold thousands are already gone, totally invested in a saga which I fear will paint the galactic canvas for millenia. Now go, relax. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”

---

The days immediately following the meeting seemed to blur together. There was no big debriefing from the government, and indeed very little contact from the outside world. The teams worked hard to make sense of the mountain of data pulled out of the Cradle, with little else to occupy them. Their safehouse encompassed the top twelve floors of a tower on the east edge of an enormous arcology, but the Outreman scientists were forbidden from exploring the rest of it, or the city below.

With little else to occupy them, the teams worked hard to make sense of the mountain of data pulled out of the Cradle. In between sessions, Freyr paced the corridors while reading the news. She investigated every aspect of the leisure level sampling the bounty of delicacies on offer. But after less than a week, she had seen everything there was to see inside. And then she discovered OCI controlled the garden ringing this cupola they inhabited. Skopec was adamant that no one could go down there, to begin with. But after a full-on shouting match, he relented, and they got their garden.

Réunion was hot and humid, even at night, which made a nice change from the dry cool inside. A light breeze ruffled the carefully manicured shrubs and trees lining the walkway around the edge of their building. Warm rain pattered down on the concrete pathways.

Freyr stood by the parapet, looking down at the glittering lights of the city cascading towards the sea. She sucked vapour from a soothe stick and blew it out in a tight plume above her head. She took in the flat hoverbot whirred above her head, protecting her from the rain.

Eventually,Freyr reached into one pocket and retrieved a hard copy of David & Amy’s picture. She studied it hard in the half-dark, trying to memorise every detail of their faces. She had a great memory for data, but struggled with faces. And it was becoming harder to recall them without help, and she hated that.

For the most part, both the Human and Rothian teams worked as much as they could with the resources they had available to them. There was no shortage of data for them to sort through, but they lacked a proper lab setup at the moment. Still, with such a high concentration of brilliant scientists in one space, they were able to come up with solutions to stay productive. Nirann donated some of his processing power to running analysis or simulations when needed. Within Vreta’s mind, he had Rhia sort through every bit of data storage he had to search for any information the Navigator might have left behind for him.

Through communication with Rareth, Vreta was kept up-to-date on her negotiations with the new Outremer administration, though he was not yet privy to how the Rahn’Saki was responding back home. He did expect that they were making their own plans and arranging contingencies for actions that Outremer might take. As obscure as the Rahn’Saki’s motivations were, he had never known them to face a situation unprepared. In the meantime, while Rareth herself was generally dealing with negotiations in person, she had sent Void Company to the arcology to serve as the Rothian contribution to their security. Having a team of Rothian supersoldiers on-hand was a comfort, at least.

---

Freyr was not alone out in the garden, even aside from the guards that were always present in seemingly every part of the building. Marae’Ano had decided to take a walk outside as well. Ever since they had gained access to the garden, it had been a popular spot for the Rothian team members. They tended to enjoy the heat, and Marae did not seem to be agitated by the rain in the slightest. She did not even bother with keeping overhead cover, instead allowing the rain to simply slide from her waterproof scales. As long as the water was warm, it was actually a reasonably pleasant feeling.

The rain did serve to somewhat muffle Marae’s footsteps as she approached behind Freyr. “Hello, Dr. Lang. Do you mind if I join you?” She asked, though her eyes were soon drawn to the picture she was holding. “Is that your family?”

Freyr half looked round when Marae spoke, soothe stick inches from her mouth. “Oh, uhh…sure.” She took a puff, and blew a cloud of vapour over the image she now held in both hands. “Yep…That’s David my husband, and Amy my daughter. I think we’d just spent the day watching the Deng-tsai circuit back in Babylon.”

Freyr raised the two fingers clutching her soothe stick and waved them round in a circle. “Race cars, shooting around skyscrapers in the city centre. Amy loved it, wouldn’t stop talking about it. I think David secretly hated it, but enjoyed seeing us happy all the same.” She fell silent, bit her lip.

“Do you have any children, Marae?” An Institute operator padded past them on patrol, holographic sight scanning the sky above.

Now that she had been invited, Marae stepped up alongside Freyr near the parapet, looking out over the city. There was a grin in her expression as Freyr was talking about her own family, though she showed some brief discomfort when Freyr asked her about children. “Oh, I…no, I’ve never been approved for reproductive privileges. I’ve applied, but if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not likely to ever be approved. My genetics fail to meet a lot of standards. Lung function, cardiovascular health, immune responses…it’s all things that have been medically corrected, but you can’t fool your genes, and genetic therapy can only go so far. It’s the same for a lot of Rothians my age, though. We come from a time before the Rothian genome had been so drastically improved.”

After a moment, Marae did start to smile again as her mind drifted back to some more pleasant memories. “Of course, my genetics didn’t stop me from creating life. The first true Rothian AI…I would say she was like my child in every way that mattered. I brought her into the world, though it required a lot more mathematics than the usual method.” She chuckled. “I raised her too. Back then, most Rothian hatchlings were raised by their own parents, and I suppose I got to experience the same thing. It might have been a bit easier, though. You can’t exactly tweak the algorithms in an organic child’s brain if they are learning the wrong lessons.”

Freyr studied Marae as she spoke in a faint residual light. She felt sorry for the Rothian when she detected a hint of kindred sadness in that alien frame. Her read of their general body language was improving, she subconsciously noted.

“Our species are quite alike once you peel back the layers. We both crave sublimity - but no one ever stops to consider what we lose along the way.” Freyr sighed, taking another drag and looking back over Réunion.

It was late in the evening, but most of the city below them was still bathed in bright neon light. These blues and pinks rippled out across the dark stillness of the vast lake to mingle with bright pricks from yachts on the water. Though not as bright, Freyr thought she could see cars whizzing around below, by the temporary dip in glare from the structures behind them. Like some planet passing in front of a distant star.

When Marae began talking about AI, Freyr couldn’t help but take interest. The person standing next to her was the foremost authority in pure machine learning, after all. She chuckled at the joke. “No, but I can think of many times that would have come in handy.” A pang of sadness plucked at Freyr’s soul when she realised she was using past tense. Her thoughts again drifted back to the Cradle, as they had thousands of times before.

“Do you think it's unusual… how the Cradle behaves? It is millions of years old, potentially - and yet it is displaying signs I would normally associate with a nascent intelligence. Something that is still learning about its environment. As far as i can tell, it is properly powered. It is almost certainly more powerful than it lets on. The Navigator alluded to them being wounded, but a core principle of reactive synthetic architecture is that it can reconstitute. Why isn’t it using whatever initial blueprint it adhered to?” Freyr looked at Marae again, blowing out more vapour.

Marae was, for a moment, hesitant to answer. While Freyr looked out over the city, Marae’s eyes went towards the sky, watching the rain as it fell towards her. The sky was not visible through the clouds, and even if it had been, the stars would not have been visible for the light pollution. Still, her mind imagined what her eyes could not see. The near-incomprehensible vastness of the universe still seemed immense to the Rothians, but she wondered if it felt any smaller to the Cradle beings? By all the evidence known so far, they were intergalactic beings. How vast was existence to them?

“I…hesitate to get too focused on guesses about the Cradle beings. We have been observing them from such a…limited perspective. They are intelligences that are eons old, and we cannot even begin to describe who or what created them. It is like we are trying to peer at their nature through a pinhole. We should do the best we can with the information we have, of course, but I think it is important that we approach them with the mindset that the truth could be something far outside what we can see with our perspective.” Marae answered. For a moment, she smiled and turned back towards Freyr. “After all, there was a time when Rothians thought we would never settle the stars because the distances involved were far too immense to conquer. And if we did, we would never be able to keep our people together as one. But, that was only because our understanding of physics limited our view. Once we expanded out understanding enough to learn how to send our ships faster than light, it was like the whole universe opened up to us.”

Once again, Marae’s focus was caught up in her memories. In fact, the pair’s chat had brought her back to one of the most impactful memories of her life. “I still remember that evening, actually. That is one I think I will be taking all the way to Eternity. I was on the team that was working to experimentally prove our theories on faster-than-light conveyance. Well…sort of. Tarasair was on the team. That was her name, the first AI. I was mostly there as support to her. Her mind was specialized for the kind of abstract thinking we needed for the strange problems in quantum physics we were trying to overcome, and she contributed greatly to the project. The day we finally confirmed what we had been seeing in our experiments...well, I don’t think I’ve seen that kind of genuine, uncontained happiness since. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that kind of pure wonder and hope since.”

Marae leaned forward against the parapet. “I don’t know if my words can really give justice to how it felt. I intend no offense, of course, but the context around that discovery was very different from today. When you were born, interstellar travel was already a fact of life. Every star you see when you look up at the night sky, you know can reach if you really want to. I was born before we had even set foot on our own moon, much less other stars. Our scientific understanding at the time pointed to the rest of the universe, or even just our galaxy, being forever out of reach in any practical sense. Back then, I did not know if Rothia would truly be the only world I would ever know. And then…we succeeded. The matter we had transported had only been on the subatomic scale; it would be many years before entire spaceships were even in the conversation, but the fact remained that we had done it. We had the proof, beyond any doubt, that we. Had. Done it. Light was no longer the great barrier; there were no barriers. After our initial cheering was done, we got together to celebrate. Brought out the expensive wine and everything. I remember walking out on the balcony and just looking up at the sky. It was cloudy; couldn’t see a single star, but I could imagine every one of them. Every star that we had only viewed through telescopes, all the planets, and asteroids, and everything else I had only ‘seen’ in convincing 3D models, I knew I would actually be able to see with my own two eyes one day. In my mind, at that moment, the universe was finally, truly open to me. It was…” She paused for a moment. In the rain, it was hard to notice the tears in her eyes, but the way her voice became choked up betrayed their presence all the same. “…those clouds were beautiful.”

There was a brief silence between them, and a hint of awkwardness in Marae’s expression when she glanced over again to Freyr. “Sorry, I just…” She began, though she did not complete the thought. “…I do have some ideas about the Navigator’s behavior, but…are you sure you want to talk about all that right now?” She asked, reaching a hand over to Freyr’s shoulder. “You’ve been working non-stop. Today, yesterday, all last week, I haven’t seen you when you’re not working. It is healthy to give your mind a break from time to time, not to mention good for productivity. We should do something fun.” She smiled.

Freyr listened closely as Marae recounted her experiences. She couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the life her counterpart had led. To usher in the dawn of a new era for their whole civilization seemed like a truly humbling experience. Freyr wondered whether she even wanted to pull forth the same sort of realisation from the Cradle. For over a decade, she had relentlessly pursued its secrets, looking for the answer to self-regenerative AI, limitless computing power, full consciousness mapping via simulation. But now, for the first time, Freyr was growing afraid of what their research might find.

Marae’s question brought her back to the present. Freyr lifted her eyes from the paved floor beneath them and looked at the Rothian.”Yeah, uh…hmm, maybe now isn’t the best time.” She smiled sheepishly. “What did you have in mind?”

“To the contrary, I think now is the best time for you to relax.” Marae replied. “Trust me, I know all about that obsession for answers. That frustration when an answer feels just out of reach, and that desire to just keep pushing, keep trying until it finally comes to you. And the worry you might never find it. Don’t think I haven’t gone through that whole cycle a thousand times over. But our minds aren’t that different. If you just take a step back, let your mind relax. Reset. It can make it easier for you to come back to the problem later and approach it from a different angle. With the added bonus of relieving some stress in the meantime.”

Marae hummed to herself for a moment, this time turning around and looking back towards their own building. “Let’s see, we can’t go everywhere, but we do have a fair amount of options here. We could go get some drinks, or maybe see a movie, or something more specific to this place? I mean, you could say I am like a tourist here. What would you want to show to someone who is an alien to your world? Anything about this place that you’d be eager to ‘show off’?”

As they turned back to look at their (hopefully) temporary prison, Freyr spotted Masgard Xandrus stepping out into the rain. He spotted them, caught her eye and stood still with hands tucked behind his back. Water dripped down his business suit and through his neatly trimmed hair and beard. “I, umm…I think our solicitor wants us.” Freyr pointed.

“Sorry to disturb, but someone is here to see you.” He intoned once they’d made their way back toward the entrance, Freyr’s rain cover soundlessly following them.

“Really? Whoever could it be?”

“Plenipotentiary Wallace, ma’am.” The name immediately rung a bell, but Freyr had to think hard for a moment to place where she’d heard it before.

“Oh! From Threria? We met her in that club. What does she want?”

“That’s right. She didn’t say. They’re in the landing bay now. What should I tell them?”

“Hold on, I thought nothing was allowed in or out of here?”

“Her kind do not adhere to the same rules as us mere mortals.” A wry smirk escaped across Masgard’s face.

---

Freyr had no idea what to expect as they hurried to greet Wallace, and soon realised there was no point trying to guess. When they entered the landing bay, her eyes started hurting. Wallace’s ship was large, pebble-shaped from what she could tell, and almost entirely unidentifiable. Some kind of coating or shielding obfuscated the craft, blending it into the surroundings and offending Freyr’s very eyes when she surveyed it. A low hum filled the room, setting her teeth on edge.

Plenipotentiary Wallace resurfaced in Freyr’s memory as soon as she saw her. Really, there was no way to forget the diplomat. She had grown even taller in some different shoes, and the fabulous purple gown she’d worn before was replaced by a bright white stola, encrusted with tiny, deep blue stones. Her long white hair was slicked down the back like she’d just been swimming, and a glittering constellation of metalwork sat delicately atop her head in the form of an elaborate headpiece.

Two aides flanked Wallace, men in smart black and white robes who stood with their hands at their sides. A small dark cloud obscured both their faces, generated presumably by the ship they’d arrived in. Six guards with ceremonial armour and weapons stood in two lines behind them. Skopec and an assortment of Institute soldiers stood around, looking unimpressed. Skopec began walking over when Freyr and Marae entered the landing bay with Xandrus. Wallace just smiled.

“My dears, so good to see you alive and well! I’m sorry to drop in so unexpectedly, but i was in the area and wondered if you wanted a ride? We have so much to catch up on.”

In truth, Marae was fairly disappointed to be interrupted, for a few reasons. For one, she had already spent most of the day working, and she was doubtful that this could be anything that could not wait until after a good night’s rest. Aside from that, she also genuinely wanted Freyr to be able to relax her mind, even if just for a little while. Freyr was the leader of the Human contribution to the science team, and Marae had seen her do nothing but overwork herself for weeks. She worried that the stress would end up compromising Freyr’s judgment, if she did not try to mitigate it.

Regardless, Marae still took the interruption in stride and, for now, followed along with this Plenipotentiary Wallace to hear what she had to say. Marae had never met her before, but a quick search showed that she was a diplomat on Rothia. Officially, at least. She did not know why she would be back on Outremer now, of all times. It seemed like her services would be needed on Rothia, now more than ever.

“I am afraid we haven’t met. I am Marae’Ano, the leader of the Rothian science team.” Marae introduced herself.

Wallace turned her head a fraction of an inch to look at Marae. She smiled, then gulped, stretched her jaw, and spoke back to her in a flawless Rothian tongue. “Greetings. I’m honoured to meet you, Marae’Ano. Your reputation precedes you. My name is Wallace, Plenipotentiary for the great world of Outremer. Have you been well-treated?” To Freyr, the Plenipotentiary’s voice continued to be understandable and the same tone as before. Her lips just no longer matched what her implants were feeding back to her.

Skopec clanked up next to her. “I can’t allow you to break lockdown on a whim and ride around with her. It’s not safe.” His voice was low and vitriolic. Freyr turned her head and looked up at him. She realised that his body language was that of a man who’d been frustrated in an argument not long before. Wallace noticed him squaring up to the scientist, and politely interrupted Marae’s answer, back in Human tongue.

“Sorry, Marae. Sergeant - leave the poor woman alone please. She’s been through enough.”

Skopec gritted his teeth, which gradually turned into a strained smile when he realised he would need to try a different tact with this mysterious woman. He turned towards Wallace. “I will have to inform my commanding officer about your arrival, ma’am.”

“They already know I’m here.” Wallace replied, a an air of superiority wafting across her crystalline face.

The difference was subtle when Marae started to hear her language natively from Wallace, rather than through an automated translation. Translation software tended to do quite a good job of conveying the intended meaning behind even aspects of speech like tone, but the difference was still noticeable. Not many people bothered to learn alien languages, but if anyone would do such a thing, Marae supposed it would make sense for someone like a diplomat.

Marae gave a quick look towards Skopec. She had been wanting a change of scenery for a while, and she felt that there might have been an opportunity for it here, if only for a little while. There was a legitimate need to worry about danger, she supposed, but she also had an idea in mind to deal with that. “If I may, perhaps you would feel more comfortable if a member of Void Company accompanied us? One of our supersoldiers can do more to keep us safe than an entire security detail. I would feel quite comfortable being protected by one of them.” Marae suggested.