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"It's a Cube-designed lab module. It we need to, we can eject it into space, then destroy it with blaster fire," the captain noted.

  Kalana pressed a button on the communications terminal, but the screen remained blank. "Hello?" a voice said from the other side.

  "Hello?" Kalana said. "Who the hell is this? Identify yourself."

  "I am Reton. Who are you?"

  "Elf Marine Expeditionary Force Captain Kalana Grenor..."

  "Too long. What do your friends call you?"

  She looked at the others in shock. "They call me Kalana."

  "Kalana, a lovely name. It rolls off the lips like water in a stream, assuming one has lips... Kalana, you may enter, but only you."

  "Wait a minute. You can't be making demands..."

  "Forgive me. Please, come inside so that you and I can talk. No threats. No intimidation. Just talk. I made you tea."

  She muted the comm's microphone. "Sirs?"

  "I'd say go," Menos said, "but it's your decision, Titus."

  "Kalana?"

  "Yeah, I need to go in there."

  "You are go for entry, Captain, but I want you suited up. We might have to eject the lab."

  Kalana switched to stryker-mode and formed armor around her body. She left her weapons stored, though. When she was ready, she unmuted the mic. "I'm coming in."

  "Wonderful! I also have scones!"

  She clicked off the comm, then walked over to the door and knocked while her team and the security contingent brought their weapons to bear. The door opened, and she stepped inside.

  Sitting next to the terminal was the robot, its neon elf eyes squinting at the terminal screen. It looked up and a smile formed on its glowing lips. "You're not a mechanoid. My scanners detect an organic body underneath your armor. Is that a permanent condition?"

  "Yes... No... I'm a cyborg. How do you know the Standard language?"

  "I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but the two techs examining me left the terminal on when they bolted from the room. I think I scared them. Anyway, I used it to learn your language."

  "We'll keep that little fact to ourselves. What else did you learn?"

  "Only that mechanoids don't seem to exist here; at least there is no mention of them. All your citizens seem to be organics. What do you look like underneath your armor?"

  Against her better judgment, Kalana went elf. "What do you think?"

  "Different. The lack of chrome will take some getting used to. Have some tea."

  She walked over and poured a cup. "So, what's your story?"

  The robot turned to face her, then crossed its legs and placed its hands in its lap with fingers laced. "I am Reton."

  "Hello, Reton. So, what's a mechanoid?"

  "A mechanoid is a silicon-based life form." He looked around the room, then fixed his gaze on Kalana. "I don't recognize your species."

  "I'm an elf from the planet Ventos Prime. Where do you call home?"

  He thought for a moment. "I think you would call it a nebula. Lots of energy and mass floating around ripe for the taking." His cartoon eyebrows knitted together. "I honestly couldn't tell you where it is since I have no idea where I am."

  "We can just leave that for the moment. How did you get here? We found you drifting in the debris left over from a ship battle."

  "I was escorting a prisoner to a secure birthing center when she escaped. As I was trying to apprehend her, we were sucked into some kind of portal. Right after we entered, she and I had a disagreement which led to my being ejected into space."

  Kalana sat down across from Reton. "We were part of a group of ships exploring this area of space. Without warning, a huge portal opened in space ahead of us. Almost immediately, a mammoth ship emerged from this hole in space. A group of raiders from the Claus Collective appeared and tried to take the ship thinking it was a derelict. The big ship attacked the raiders, then it attacked us before disappearing. Could that be the ship carrying your prisoner?"

  "Was it really big? Lots of doors and big hooks?"

  "Yes, exactly."

  "No, that big ship wasn't carrying my prisoner. That big ship was my prisoner. Her name is Clare, and she's a mass murderer and terrorist. I have to find her and shut her down."

  "Clare is alive?"

  He nodded. "She's a mechanoid just like me. She is very much alive. We have to find her."

  "I agree. Any idea why she attacked the raiders? Even frigates couldn't be much of a threat to something that large."

  "My guess is she wanted to examine your technology to see if there was anything she could use."

  The door opened and Captain Menos and Colonel King stepped inside. Kalana made quick introductions while the ship went to battle stations. "We found Clare," Captain Menos said.

  "Excellent. Where is she?" Reton asked as he stood up.

  "On an attack vector toward a large asteroid about two light-minutes from here. Our probes show the asteroid contains a very large shipyard inside. We think the Claus Collective was planning to attack the League," Colonel King explained.

  Reton thought again before answering. "Clare is highly intelligent. She must have found something when she examined that group of ships that tried to take her. Whatever it is she found, she thinks there's more of it in that yard. Look, I need to get aboard her so that I can shut her down."

  "You don't mean kill her, do you?" Kalana asked.

  "I am a sworn agent of the mechanoid government. If she escapes my custody, I have orders to bring her back dead or alive. If I can get aboard her, I should be able to put her to sleep."

  "And if you can't put her down for a nap?" King asked.

  "Then it sucks to be her. Maybe she should have thought twice before annihilating a station filled with politicians."

  Captain Menos raised her hand. "Look, we have no extradition treaty with your people or any evidence regarding your terrorism claims. All we do have is her attack on this ship and the dozen Collective frigates. Unfortunately, the Claus Collective is not part of the League, so we can't just hand you over to them..."

  "Fine. How about we do this? Find Clare and let me out near her. Hell, I'll even make it look like I broke out. I can jet over and get inside her hull via a secondary airlock. If I'm successful, then the Collective will have the largest salvage claim they've ever seen."

  "And if you’re not successful?" Kalana asked.

  "Then I'll be dead, and you're going to have a giant, rampaging, sapient warship running around looking for tech and consumables."

  "That is not an option until I can confer with my higher-ups," Menos said. "Until then, Reton, you're our guest." She tapped the room's intercom button. "Number One!"

  "Ma'am"

  "I need quarters for our guest."

  "Yes, ma'am. I'll send down a yeoman to take him there."

  "Kalana, escort the gentleman," King ordered.

  "Give me a room number, Number One."

  The first officer complied.

  "You know what's funny?"

  "What?" King asked.

  "This is the kind of indecision that got those politicians killed." With that, he followed Kalana out the door while leaving two worried officers.

  "What do you think, Titus? Can we trust him?"

  "Do we have any choice?"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kalana led Reton down corridors past staring members of the crew. Reton suddenly stopped in front of two members he recognized. Leaning down, he looked them in the eyes and said, "I've got your backs," before moving on.

  "Who were they?" Kalana asked.

  "The two techs who were examining me when I came-to. The looks on their faces are priceless."

  "Are you always this playful?"

  He thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess I am. It's just that this is all new to me, all this carbon and oxygen."

  "Worried about rust?"

  "A little. You wouldn't believe how long it takes to get this stuff to shine," he said while brushing away a nonexistent dust mote from his shoul
der. "Look, I'm sorry about the way I acted back there. I don't do well with failure or red tape."

  "Red tape is normal, but why failure?" she asked as she palmed a lock pad. The door opened up to a nicely furnished room. She motioned for him to enter it while she followed behind. "I hope these accommodations meet your expectations."

  "A sturdy couch and a vid monitor--all the comforts of home. We really aren't that different, are we?"

  "You have couches?"

  He nodded. "And chairs, and tables, and even bookshelves. That e-book thing was only a fad. Our books are printed on very thin metal."

  "I need to get back on duty. Can I get you anything?" she asked.

  "He grabbed a book from a nearby shelf and opened it to the first page. "Nah, this will do just fine. You will let me know if we encounter Clare, won't you?"

  She nodded. "Of course. Ummm, I'm going to have to lock this door, and there will be two guards outside. It's a protocol thing."

  "Not to worry! Waiting is second nature to me."

  She smiled, then walked out the door. He waited to see if she came back. When she didn't he got up and stepped in front of the view screen. A multi-tentacled metal creature emerged from his back and jumped over to the screen where it embedded itself into the unit’s control pad. Satisfied, Reton sat back down. "Activate," he said.

  The screen lit up with an image of a rotating diamond at the center.

  "Clare, do you copy?"

  The diamond was replaced with the image of another mechanoid. "Well, do my ocular sensors deceive me? Could it be that my jailer, Reton, has survived? I should have vaporized you when I had the chance."

  "Damn, it’s good to see you too, girlfriend! Did you get the crystals I sent you?"

  "You are such the funny mech. What do you want?"

  "I want you to heave-to and surrender to the captain of this ship. She seems to think that executing you would be a bad idea. I will put you to sleep until I find a way back to the nebula."

  "The nebula? Our people want me dead, you idiot. I will only return to the nebula when I'm good and ready, not a moment sooner."

  "Then I will have to terminate your life functions. I promise, your death will be swift and painless."

  "Listen up, worm. The only mech that's going die here is you. I plan to go back and rip control of the nebula from those dawdling idiots of a council and make our people gods."

  "Blasphemy so doesn't suit you. You have my solemn word, Clare, you will soon be dead. Don't say I didn't give you a chance. Of course, your people love to get chances so they can stab the giver through their power units. Reton out! Close connection!"

  The tentacled remote shut down the connection before returning to Reton's back where it was reabsorbed into his body. He picked up the remote from the coffee table and pressed a button. A romantic comedy appeared. "Well this looks promising," he said while settling in to watch the show.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kalana and Titus briefed the team as the Mekla drove through other-space as it headed to its meeting with Clare. When they finished bringing everyone up to speed, the team discussed what would happen next.

  "Murph, Nova, and Parker, have any of you encountered sapient robots? Reton says he lives in a nebula."

  Nova and Parker shrugged. "We've got nothing, Boss. Never dealt with anything not organic in origin," Nova said. "Hell, even the Nerfretti were once purely carbon-based."

  Murph frowned. "About 500,000 years ago, I stumbled upon a ship unlike anything I had ever seen before."

  "Was this when you went on that damn walkabout?" Parker asked.

  "Yes. I found the experience illuminating. Anyway, the ship had crashed and there were no survivors. I found only broken machines scattered about the area. After searching, I decided the crew might have left, so I scanned the wreckage and moved on. Now that I think about it, one of the machines looked like our Mr. Reton." He walked over to the holotable and activated it. When the image of the League flag appeared, he placed his hand on the console, then closed his eyes. The flag was replaced by a three-dimensional spectrograph. He opened his eyes "This was the residual energy spectrum my scan picked up before I left." He input several commands into the console. A second spectrograph appeared next to the first. This new one changed rapidly. "Running comparison of all energy spectra measured in the last 300 years including ones taken by the Martok and probes inside the Large Magellanic Cloud."

  The second graph abruptly stopped changing as both graphs flashed blue.

  "Found a match..." he said as the graphs were replaced by a three-dimensional image of a nebula. "The Omega Nebula in the Sagittarius area of this galaxy at a distance of roughly 5,500 light-years. This nebula is about 15 light-years across and is considered one of the most massive stellar nurseries found in the Milky Way to date."

  "So, that's his home?" King asked.

  "If my assumption that I found a wrecked ship belonging to his species is correct, then this is his home."

  "We should tell him," Nana said.

  "Right now, we have to concentrate on Clare," King said while changing the image above the holotable. The Omega Nebula was replaced by a computer-generated image of Clare. "We fed the scan data into the computer and let it chew on it for a while. We now have complete 3D data of our new friend. Unfortunately, we have no idea what a lot of her internal components do."

  He pressed a button which removed the outer skin from the model, revealing her internal structure. "Clare has an internal structure typical for an Annihilator-class mega ship. The fact that the ship is alive doesn't change basic engineering principles."

  King reached into the image and spread his fingers outward from a spot near the center of the ship. "We think this gray area is analogous to a brain. We detected a large number of data conduits radiating outward from here." He moved to the rear of the ship. "The computer has flagged these structures as possibly fuel storage and energy distribution..."

  "Sir, aren't those kinda small for fuel tanks?" Marcus asked.

  "Scanners think they hold hydrogen and anti-hydrogen. The problem with that is the production of the anti-hydrogen—it’s too energy intensive to be usable."

  "Sir, what are these structures?" Mersa asked.

  "We don't know. They seem attached to the skin somehow..."

  Glean stepped up to the image. "Computer, show energy flows inbound and outbound from unknown structures. Set inbound flow to structures as red and outbound as blue."

  "Working..."

  Kalana whistled. "That’s a lot of energy flowing from the skin in to those structures. Outbound seems to connect everywhere."

  Nova tilted her head. "Computer. Are there any connections between unknown structures and fuel storage?"

  "Yes, but they do not carry energy. Data is consistent with fuel lines."

  "Well, that makes sense..." Glean started to say.

  "Computer, is there any matter or anti-matter flowing from structures to fuel tanks?"

  "Yes. Both fuels are flowing from the unknown structures to the tanks."

  "Shit," Mersa exclaimed. "Computer, hypothesis: unknown structures are mass-energy conversion devices. Analyze energy and mass flows. Solve for mass production and mass-to-energy conversion inefficiencies in units of percent."

  "Working... 10% for both processes."

  Mersa sat down and stared at the diagram. "That's blatantly impossible."

  "Confirmed," Murph said as he sat down next to her. "They figured out how to create antimatter with an efficiency equal to that of a water turbine."

  "Care to tell the rest of us rabbits what the hell is going on?" King suggested.

  "Sir, if we're right, Clare's skin collects energy from its surroundings, then feeds it to a device which converts it into matter and antimatter. The same device then uses this fuel to power the ship. It refuels by flying through energy sources such as nebulas and stars."

  "So, she doesn't have to refuel in the conventional manner. So why raid a shipyard?"
/>   "Perhaps she's trying to find a way home, sir," Glean suggested.

  King snapped his fingers. "Thank you, Glean. That makes sense. She's a ship, so she should have star charts. If she has star charts, then she knows how plarking far it is to her home. I bet she's looking for any tech that can cut down her transit time."

  Kalana joined in. "Sir, those frigates she hijacked. I bet at least one of them had a copy of the Collective's database..."

  She was followed by Trent. "And we all know how much the collective loves stealing--excuse me, borrowing--things from passing League freighters."

  "Murph, has anything useful been stolen in these parts within the last five years?" King asked.

  "Working, sir... A pair of Erdexi pangalactic portal generators went missing a year ago."

  "Didn't the Erdexi once adapt those things into ship's drives?"

  "Yes, but they couldn't get them scaled up much past small-freighter-size. They never even got close to being able to move a ship the size of Clare."

  "But can Clare, a sapient ship with the brain the size of a battle shuttle?" King thought aloud. "Computer. Send recordings of this discussion to Captain Menos and mark them 'Eyes-Only.' Question: 'Can we bring Reton in on this?' Immediate send."

  "Working... Message sent."

  "Now we wait for the gears of bureaucracy to slowly turn."

  "And hope we don't get caught between them, sir." Kalana added.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Reton sat at the edge of the couch clutching a cloth napkin he had found in the room's kitchen net. In front of him, a Tralaskan soap opera was coming to a crescendo when there was a knock at the door. "Come in," he said without tearing his ocular sensors from the unfolding drama.

  Kalana stepped inside, but he refused to look away from the tableau on the screen. "Have tea. Have a seat. Jewels is about to find out who the father of her baby is!" the mesmerized mechanoid said as he brought the napkin up to his cartoon lips. "I knew it! It was that scalawag, Roscoe. Damn him to the seven eternal hells..."

  She reached down and clicked off the viewer.

  "What? We still have to see who inherits the volcano mine!"

  She took the napkin from him. "The whole season is stored in the ships data banks. You can still find out who gets the mine and who gets the shaft. We need to talk to you."