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“I don’t like this,” Urle said.

They’d surfaced in realspace nearly three hours ago, utilizing his idea of sending a message in the pseudo-photons of their emergence.

And then they’d waited for a sign.

The Musk Field around the planet was the worst he’d ever seen, so they couldn’t even get into a proper orbit, let alone a low orbit, as he’d hoped.

Shattered stations, gutted warships, expended munitions – some of it potentially still live – and all manner of unidentifiable objects floated around the planet.  In time, they’d form a hideous ring of wreckage around the world, but for now they were in all sorts of eccentric orbits, flying in all manner of direction.

A lot of those objects, he knew, would be bodies.  Billions of Hev had died in defense of this world, their last resting place being the void.  Urle had no idea how they viewed that culturally, but imagining himself in their place he could only hope he would have fought to the last as they had.  It made him feel reverent, scared, and disgusted at his own mistake earlier of referring to it all as junk.

His system calculated that it might take ten thousand years for the majority of it to come down, or decades of dedicated clearing work.  Messy work, at that, as any mistake, like letting a clearing drone get hit, or worse a ship, would add thousands of new pieces that would shake up the orbits of other meticulously mapped objects.

Guono Daa looked to N’Keeea, who had been waiting on the bridge since their emergence.

“Do you still believe they saw the message?” she asked, doing her approximation of a frown.

“Yes,” N’Keeea replied, his voice subdued.  “They saw.  If not, they would have launched an attack by now.”

“Then why do they wait?” Daa pressed.  “Time is sensitive, the P’G’Maig will not wait forever-“

“We will wait as long as necessary for an answer!” N’Keeea snapped, his teeth clacking threateningly.

Daa was apparently not frightened by his outburst, but was insulted.  She took a moment to compose herself, but before she spoke, Urle leaned forward.

“Ambassador, you are very keyed up.  I suggest you take a moment to compose yourself.”

N’Keeea looked, just as quickly, quite chagrined.  “My . . . apologies, Captain Daa.  That was uncalled for, and I-“

Daa looked like she was ready to accept the apology, but before N’Keeea could even finish giving it, a warbling sound went off on the bridge.

“Incoming laser transmission,” the comm officer called out.  “Codes indicate that it is Tul in origin, not Maig.”

N’Keeea looked ready to get upset about the lack of honorifics, but Captain Daa spoke first.  “Put it through.”

The audio was low-quality, and there was no accompanying visual.  Urle checked the raw data himself, and saw it was coming from a seemingly-inert satellite, bounced from who knew where.  The history data was hidden carefully.

“Ambassador N’Keeea, you are welcomed back to the home.  State name of and disposition of forces.”

It went silent, and Urle looked to N’Keeea, who said nothing.

“What did they mean ‘disposition of forces’?” Daa demanded.

“What did your message tell them?” Urle added.  When N’Keeea had given them a message to relay, he had told them it was only a unique identifier, but laid out nothing more.  It had been rather long for even a unique code, however, and he had suspected the ambassador was saying more than he’d been letting on.

“I was given a number of pre-set codes to use on my return,” N’Keeea replied nervously.  “The one I chose . . . indicated that I had returned with military aid.”

Urle took a deep breath.  “I trust that you will make clear the truth now, Ambassador?”

“In a way,” he replied evasively.  “Please allow me to send another message, we can use our own tight-beam towards the satellite and-“

“Not unless we know what you’re actually saying,” Urle said.  “If you lie and tell them we’re here to help you fight the Maig, then you’re not forcing our hand – you’re hurting your people.  We cannot fight a war for you.”

“I understand the reality of the situation!” N’Keeea snapped.  “But if I had not sent that message as I did – they would not have spoken to me!  You do not understand the mindset of a dying civilization, Captain Urle!  We are not going to be reassured that we will only lose our home and all that we hold dear.  Saving our lives by helping us scurry away in the night is no victory, and if I had dared to start off telling the truth . . .”

With great effort, N’Keeea bit back his words.  He trembled a few moments, then his shoulders slumped.  “I will tell you exactly what I say.  But I beg of you – please let me say it how I must.”

Guono Daa looked to Urle, her tentacles imparting her concern and skepticism of N’Keeea’s words.

Urle wasn’t sure if he could trust the Hev at this point – but he thought that N’Keeea was right.  If they sent their own messages, or altered his, it would be an instant warning that they were probably an enemy and were attempting a false-flag operation.

“Go ahead,” Urle told N’Keeea.  “Send your message – but do tell me exactly what it says.  And if it’s promising support we can’t give, I will not allow it.”

The Ambassador nodded, and keyed in a message.  Urle saw it in real-time;

‘Forces different than hoped.  Request direct communication.’

When it was sent, they waited.  A light-speed reply would take only a minute or so to reach them at their distance, but none came.

Daa looked at him, concern on her face.  She slithered closer, enough to look over the arm of his chair.

“I’m not sure if they’re willing to do it, Acting-Captain.  What do you think?” she said softly, so N’Keeea might not hear.  Hev had good hearing, but he at least pretended politely not to be listening in.

“We just have to keep waiting,” Urle told her.  “We can continue to charge for our jump out in the meantime.  How much longer on that?”

“We were able to lose a lot of our heat in zerospace,” she began.  “But not as much as was optimal.”

Unfortunate, Urle thought.  But zerospace did not behave as modeled, and while the . . . void or whatever they traveled through in the realm could absorb a ship’s heat through unknown means, even while a ship would accelerate well past the speed of light within it, no one had ever created a formula to predict just how much.

“We’ve had to spend forty-five minutes dispersing enough heat from our system that we could begin the build-up of the charge for another jump.  At this point we are approximately four hours from full charge.”

“And ship integrity?”

“We’re pushing the Bright Flower hard, Acting-Captain, but all seems within acceptable ranges.  He’s a good ship, he’ll hold together.”

It took him a moment to remember that Sepht regarded most ships as male rather than female, and as they continued to wait he let his mind ponder on the odder aspects of language.

One often had a lot of time to think in space.

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