Sheldon floated the Halo in through the docking bay hatch and settled to the deck. “We have arrived,” he announced. “Please follow the guideway to the appropriate airlock.” As always, the soft-rose ribbon on the wall indicated our path.

  As Nat and I reached the bottom of the airlock steps, a delegation of Gen came through a hatch on the closest wall. At seven feet or more in height, they were impressive and a little intimidating, especially since all but one were carrying some kind of rifle-like weapon. And it turned out living Gen didn’t look quite as much like squirrels. I couldn’t decide what they did resemble, but whatever it was, it wasn’t herbivorous. I’d never thought to check Alaric’s teeth, but there was a definite predator vibe.

  The lead Gen was wearing the same translation necklaces we’d used, I noticed. The leader stopped and spoke, or at least moved his lips. The necklace said, “Greetings. I am Commander Nond. Which of you is Primary?”

  “Primary means in charge,” Sheldon said into my cling-on.

  “I guess I am,” I said. I turned to glare at Nat, who had started to step forward. “I’m the person who started this whole mess, so it’s my responsibility.”

  Nond made a sideways motion with his head. “That was a nod,” Sheldon added helpfully.

  “Both of you. Please follow me,” Nond said. “We have a conference room prepared. I regret I cannot offer you refreshments other than purified H2O, but we were not prepared for hosting a Terran delegation.”

  “That’s fine, sir. Water’s good. I don’t think we’re in an eating mood, anyway.” I tried to add a smile, but gave it up after a moment.

  Nond led us through the same hatch he’d appeared from, where we found yet more storm troopers waiting. The first set followed us through, and I began to wonder just how much security the Gen required for two miscellaneous humans.

  We were led to a room very similar to the conference room in the Halo, but with easily twice the seating capacity. The walls displayed a number of stellar and planetary images, none familiar to me. But probably all real. You didn’t have to invent such vistas if you could just go there and take pictures.

  We were given seats, each with a glass and a pitcher of what was probably water. The glass and pitcher were of a proper size for a human, and in fact looked quite mundane. Very probably they’d been printed just for the occasion. That was a good sign, surely. No one would take the time to customize a table setting if they were about to vaporize you.

  But then again, aliens.

  Nond sat across from us, leaned forward on his elbows, and tented his fingers in a very human gesture. If you ignored the claws, that is. Another item I’d missed.

  Before Nond could start, I spoke up. “Sir, I don’t think this has come up in conversation, but we have two of the Loranna in custody in our ship. The two leaders, apparently. We’d kinda like to unload them, if you don’t mind.”

  Nond stared at me for several seconds, then looked at the ceiling. “Clusterfuck, San-Joh called it. I think the word is already being used by some crew.”

  He gestured to a crewcritter standing to the side and spoke rapidly in what I assumed had to be Gen. The crewcritter hurried out, and Nond directed his attention back to me. “We have a number of items to discuss. First and foremost, there is the matter of the Lorannic presence on your planet. While we believe we have located them all, and they certainly will not be able to continue their planned takeover, we still need to document the situation. As primary participants in the recent events, your testimony will be critical.”

  He paused.

  “Secondly, there is the issue of the Foundation ship that you are in possession of, the Quest for Knowledge. It is, of course, Foundation property and must be returned. However, the ship claims to be your property and has refused to follow legitimate orders. It is clearly malfunctioning.”

  Again, the pause.

  “And third, we have the status of the person named Alaric, who stole the ship in the first place. I understand he is deceased?”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. They were ending with the clincher, at least as far as I was concerned. Oh well, might as well get it over with. “Ah, yeah, I kind of ran him over.”

  Nond made the sideways motion with his head again. “Your ship intelligence gave us a summary of events from the moment it was stolen, and has released the postmortem report to us. It described Alaric’s fate in—”

  “He,” Nat interjected.

  “What?”

  “He. Sheldon is a sentient being, not an object.”

  Nond gazed at her for a moment. “That is an item for future discussion. However, even granting your premise, the pronoun I am using is a valid gender-neutral designation, at least in Gen. It may not be translating well into Human.”

  “English. And I’ll concede the usage on that basis.”

  I turned to stare at Nat, wondering if I’d made a mistake taking the lead. She was going for the jugular, which actually might be a good thing.

  Nond turned back to me. “Further to the subject of Alaric. He was killed during the commission of a felony, so his right to consequential correction is already compromised. And given the circumstances, we’re not entirely sure there are any laws under which we could prosecute, even if we wanted to. A defense advocate would simply argue that you could not avoid, er, running over Alaric if you couldn’t see him, and placing him in a freezer was a good-faith attempt to preserve him for a proper post-life ceremony. I can’t say I would disagree with such an argument.”

  “What about the medical nanites?” I asked. “I made resuscitation impossible. I effectively killed him a second time with the freezer thing.”

  Nond frowned. Actually frowned, which seemed to have the same meaning to a Gen. “What do you mean?”

  I gave a summary of Sheldon’s original commentary about reviving Alaric. When I was done, Nond and his associates looked at each other in turn. “But that’s … ridiculous,” Nond said. “I’ve seen the postmortem report. You don’t come back from that level of cranial damage in any case, but freezing would generally not be a critical issue. If a victim were otherwise revivable, medical nanites would simply repair damage from ice crystals as part of the process.”

  Now it was our turn to exchange confused glances. “So,” Nat finally said, “Sheldon lied to us?”

  “Sheldon?” I subvocalized. “Any comment?”

  Nothing.

  “We have excluded the Ship Intelligence from this discussion,” Nond said, apparently sensing the attempted sidebar. “And to answer your question, yes, it would appear the Ship Intelligence lied to you. Which … ” Nond frowned again, “should be impossible.”

  “Why?” Nat glared back at him with her best thunderous expression. “It’s obvious why he did it. He didn’t want us to contact you. I’m not surprised, and honestly, I don’t blame him. It’s certainly not going to affect our friendship.”

  Nond straightened in his chair. “Friendship?”

  “Yeah,” I interjected, “friendship. Sheldon is our friend. He’s a little abrasive at times, but he’s also been there for us when we needed him, and he risked his life, or existence if you prefer, to help save the Earth. We’re not giving him up without a fight.”

  Nat took up the attack. “And I bet we could get the whole planet behind us on this. I know how to use social media, believe—”

  Nond waved a hand to cut her off. “I am aware of the power of social media. We are infested with it as well. At the moment, the human populace is not aware of the extraterrestrial aspects of this adventure, and we would prefer to keep it that way.” He exchanged looks with his compatriots, then turned back to face us. “We will have to discuss this internally. You will doubtless be more comfortable in the Foundation ship, er, Halo, where I assume you have human-compatible supplies. We will contact you presently for individual interviews.” He stood, followed a moment later by the other members of the Gennan delegation.

  After a brief hesitation, I nodded and stood. “Fair enough. You know where to find us.”

  The guard squad formed a corridor for us, and the delegation marched back to the docking bay. We were halfway back to the ship when I noticed another honor guard coming our way. My guides scrunched over to the left side of the hallway, and the other group adjusted accordingly.

  As we came even, I was amazed to see Karen and Arley, in their natural forms, with their hands behind their backs. Karen spotted me at the same moment, snarled, and yelled something. Then she dove straight at me, mouth agape and fangs showing to maximum effect. I only had time to think predator before half the guard troop dogpiled her while the other half piled on Arley, just on principle. Meanwhile, two of my escorts literally picked me up by the arms and hustled me down the hall, my legs dangling and my feet not even touching the ground. Judging from the curses, Nat was getting the same treatment.

  They didn’t put us down until we were in front of the ship. I glanced at my guards, who were looking somewhat less cool and detached. This might have been more action than they normally got on board ship. “What did she say?” I subvocalized.

  Sheldon made a noise that might have been a laugh. “Something about not bothering to remove your limbs at all before eating you. I think perhaps the romance is off.”

  Chapter Forty-Two: Negotiations

  Day 32. Monday

  I wiped my forehead with my hand. The session with the interviewer wasn’t an interrogation, strictly speaking. Certainly there were no harsh lights or hovering thugs with clubs in hand. It had nevertheless been a thorough grilling. But it did seem to be wrapping up, and I still had all my body parts.

  I hadn’t run into Karen again, although I had seen a couple of other Loranna in cuffs, being escorted to unknown locations. Apparently the roundup was still underway.

  The interviewer, who had introduced himself as Aggam, was jotting notes on a pad with a stylus. That was interesting, in that it seemed low-tech for an interstellar civilization. However, when I watched closely, I could see that it was some form of e-paper. The sheet scrolled up as necessary to make room for new notes, and on a couple of occasions, Aggam had scrolled back down to reference an earlier notation. I resolved to ask Nat what she thought of it.

  And even more interestingly, Aggam was not Gen. He had introduced himself as a Ka’Hai, which I vaguely remembered Sheldon having mentioned in passing. He wore clothes, which made me think they might be the makers of the intelligent cloth. Ka’Hai were not easily identifiable in terms of taxonomy. Of course, there was no reason to believe that alien biosystems would neatly divide themselves into reptiles, mammals, insects, and so on, but even so, I kept trying to categorize him. The closest I could come to an analogy was the alien prawns in District 9, but cuter somehow.

  Aggam made a final note with a flourish and put down his stylus. “Thank you, Jack. This has been most helpful. Our governing council is enacting emergency executive orders to define any continued Lorannic presence on Earth as an act of predatory colonialism, which carries significant penalties in addition to anything else they’re likely to be hit with. Any Loranna not yet rooted out will most likely surrender eventually.”

  “You’re sure they won’t just go deeper underground and try to keep sabotaging us?”

  Aggam made the same sideways head motion as Nond, but to the left this time. “The sanctions for being caught doing so would be sweeping and expensive. I wouldn’t put it past the Loranna to make the attempt if it seemed cost-effective. Or doable. We have severed their contact with their A.I., disassembled their infrastructure, and incarcerated most of their personnel. Their choices are to surrender or spend the rest of their lives hiding out on an alien planet.”

  “If you say so. What happens now?”

  “In the short term, you go back to your ship and get some rest until Commander Nond is ready to speak to all of you. In the longer term, that will depend on what the commander and the High Council decide. As you say in Human, that’s way above my pay grade.”

  I nodded and stood. The omnipresent guard unit made the inevitable corridor for me.

  I turned in my seat as Nat entered the conference room. She rolled her eyes at me in a silent acknowledgment of our shared torture and threw herself into another chair. On the monitor, a reporter was providing commentary on the ongoing disassembly of Tate Industrial Park. A contingent of supposed CIA agents, in full view, were in the process of hauling away something unidentifiable. Security ringed the area, preventing media from hassling the workers.

  The Gen systems didn’t monitor all the same TV networks that Sheldon had access to on Earth, but the overlap was enough that we weren’t missing anything important. And I was grateful that the Gen had been willing to share the feed.

  “So what’s the score, now?” I asked Nat.

  “According to Aggam, the last count was four hundred and twelve confirmed collaborationists, three hundred and eight of them politicians. There are probably a lot more, but I doubt anyone will ever identify them all. The Covenant can’t arrest them, of course, without alerting the whole human race to their presence. Instead, the Covenant has notified each of them quietly that the Loranna are no longer in a position to maintain any agreements they might have made.”

  “Any more Loranna?”

  “As Sheldon said, they tended to use humans instead of getting directly involved. So there were only three actual disguised Loranna operating as humans full-time. Not including the Harris management and Tate administration, of course. That’s another fifteen, but they mostly stayed in Dunnville and operated under the radar.” Nat watched the TV feed for a few seconds then continued, “Aggam gave me a piece of juicy info at the end of my interview. They’ve done some forensic data diving based on what they’ve learned here, and it looks like Sheldon was right and the Loranna have been working this scam on several other pre-FTL worlds. They aren’t sure yet if it’s just this particular clan or if other clans are also working the con. They think, in fact, that one clan might have had the idea, then started franchising it out in return for a percentage of the profits. That would explain how a small clan like Karen’s was able to set this up. In any case, the Covenant administration is looking stupid for not having noticed a pattern. Apparently, the Loranna were using Foundation surveillance projects to choose their targets and to prepare the covert teams to fit in.”

  “How many systems had they been successful with?”

  “Three. One local intelligent species wiped out, except for a couple hundred kept for breeding purposes. Two others down to a few percent of their top population count.”

  I pantomimed a “wow,” then said, “So multiple counts of genocide.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What do you think the Covenant will do?”

  “Aggam thinks the Loranna will be grounded for ten thousand years. Standard years, which are a little longer than Earth years.”

  I chuckled. “Grounded? Like when I stayed out too late as a kid?”

  “Yes, exactly like that.” Nat grinned back. “The Loranna—all Loranna, except for diplomatic staff—will be restricted to their home planet for the duration. Any ships that try to leave will be shot down. Any Loranna caught off-planet will be treated like escaped convicts.”

  “Mm. Harsh.”

  “Mm-hmm. The idea is to ensure that those involved in these plots will be dead before the Loranna can rejoin polite society.” Nat blinked and hesitated. “I asked about life expectancies, given the expected duration of the sentence. Aggam replied that it wasn’t a subject for discussion with precontact species.”

  “Huh.” I stared off into space for a few moments, then refocused on her. “Not the kind of response you’d get unless there was a bombshell coming. I hope humanity eventually qualifies.”

  “Oh, and the Loranna will be required to pay compensation to the victim species. Which will include Earth, since they’ve managed to do a lot of damage while they’ve been here. No idea what kind of numbers we’re talking about. Or even how it would translate into our economy. But it gives us a sort of starting point to get into the game.”

  Patrick entered and walked straight to the coffee maker. He popped a pod into the single-cup side of the appliance and pressed the button. While the device whirred and gurgled, he turned to me and Nat. “I never, ever want to go through that again.”

  Nat grinned. “They are thorough, aren’t they?”

  Patrick grunted. “Hopefully we’re near the tail end of this adventure. I need to have a life again. My life. And maybe without the alien interference, it’ll turn out to be a better future overall.”

  “Interesting thing … ” Nat mused.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Aggam mentioned that in order to pull off their coup, the Loranna only needed to control, or at least influence, about fifteen hundred people. Worldwide. That’s how many people actually have realistic control over our planet.”

  “Not really a surprise,” I replied. “Wasn’t there some kind of CIA exposé a few years ago about this? They claimed that they did scenarios from time to time in the department. Usually in order to bring about some sweeping change in national or global politics, they figured they’d have to neutralize anywhere from a few dozen to maybe a hundred people.”

  “Neutralize,” Patrick said, while making air quotes.

  “It’s a pyramid,” Nat said. “A very small number of people at the top have most of the influence over the things that affect the rest of humanity.”

  “So conspiracy theories about cabals running the world are right?” I asked.

  Nat sighed. “A month ago, I’d have said no. Sometimes a lot of people do the same things for similar reasons, and it looks like they’re working together, but they’re really just each following their own best interests. But in this case … ”

  “Loranna,” Patrick answered with a smile and a shrug, sitting down and taking a sip of his coffee. Then he sat forward abruptly, barely avoiding spilling the entire cup. He pointed at the news monitor, his hand shaking slightly. “Isn’t that Phil?”