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The Dark Horse answers its first distress call, and comes to the aid of some pilgrims. Maddy May goes opening boxes, and is surprised at what she finds...

Well, here's some more Star Patrol. Hey zanzio don't say I'm not responsive! Clean action, no smut yet. New adventures! Appreciation to Max Coyote for pointers and to the inimitable Spudz for laying into this one, because he sure as hell laid into this one. Hope it works!

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

_Tales of the Dark Horse _by ** Rob Baird**

Episode 4: "In case of emergency"

---

"Our first distress call," Lieutenant Commander David Bradley noted, and felt a little prickle of excitement at the thought. The mission of exploration he now found himself on hadn't exactly been his first choice, it was true, but even he couldn't deny the thrilling novelty. Helping the unfortunate? Meeting new cultures? It was pure Star Patrol. "We'll have to intervene. Presuming that is what you're seeing."

Dr. Beltran, their linguist, knew better than to speak in absolutes despite four years of training in xenolinguistics. She also knew enough to keep calm. Instead, she referred exclusively to her computer. "The pattern is repetitive, and I can clearly match some elements of the signal as referencing visible pulsars."

"Coordinates," Bradley nodded. "On screen?"

The starship Dark Horse was still in hyperspace. The viewscreen stayed switched off at such times, or projected relaxing imagery of various planetary surfaces. The gorgeous vistas and soft white noise were supposed to keep them distracted from the monotony of faster-than-light travel. Distracted, and sane.

Like David, Dr. Beltran enjoyed planets, but there was work to be done. Keeping herself calm, she swiped away the scenery and called up a three-dimensional map of their position appeared. Then the leopard added in the pulsars, one by one. "There may be more, but they aren't in our database."

David Bradley felt a little less than convinced. The golden retriever was naturally cautious, which let him serve as a nice balance to some of the more hotheaded crew of the Dark Horse.

Such as her captain.

Before summoning Captain May to the bridge, he wanted to be certain of what they were seeing. "It could be an advertisement, though," he pointed out. "Right?"

His skepticism didn't faze Felicia Beltran, because she shared it. In her scrupulous dedication to routine and regulation, she often seemed like the closest thing he had to a kindred spirit. She knew he'd appreciate her thoroughness: "Correct. Shall I tell you why I think it's a distress signal?"

"Please."

"The signal consists of trinary data broken into three 'sentences.' The first sentence," the leopard explained further, and showed the signal on the screen for the benefit of her audience. "Comprises three identical words. There is a pause, and then these six word pairs. Another pause, and then a final 'sentence' with two more words."

The retriever observed this with interest, if not full comprehension. "So what does that mean?"

"The word pairs in the middle section could be many things. However, if they are interpreted as numbers represented in trinary, the first part being the frequency of a pulsar and the second its computed distance, the first four match precisely to pulsars in the Confed astrogation database and indicate a position less than a parsec from here. The others have the same format, but I don't recognize the pulsars. It would still be quite a coincidence."

With his paws clasped behind his back, Commander Bradley walked all the way up to the viewscreen. Of course, getting closer to the signal readout didn't make it any clearer to him. "Yes, it would. You still haven't explained why you think it's a distress call."

"An educated guess, sir." The leopard magnified the first part of the signal for their review. "This 'word' is short, and repeated three times. If it was an advertisement for a space brothel, I would expect it to be more verbose. A simple plea for assistance is more logical."

"'Help. Help. Help,' then?"

Felicia nodded. "I believe so."

CSS Dark Horse was well past the Confederation's frontier, and could not expect much help of her own. The two were alone on the bridge, with David standing the late watch and Felicia serving as his assistant. The retriever took a long time to make his decision.

But, as the only representative of the Terran Confederation in the sector, and the only ship flying the flag of the noble Star Patrol, they had a reputation to uphold.

"I'm adjusting course to intercept it. Keep working on that message, and see if there's anything else you can do to make sense of it."

Dr. Beltran agreed that she would try, but neither were truly optimistic about it. A short message, in a completely alien language, was almost nothing to go on.

The mystery of it, though, gave the leopard energy. Her classmates had always accused her of being stuffy and bureaucratic -- too focused on books and protocol. An opportunity to explore the galaxy, from that perspective, was a welcome opportunity to change things up a little bit.

Passion alone couldn't wring any more meaning from the mysterious signal. In the eight hours that it took to reach its source, Felicia made no progress. Their captain, Commander Madison May, nodded understanding when this was reported to her.

"You do what you can," the akita shrugged. She was disappointed, but not surprised; it was first contact, and first contacts tended to be confusing. "Helm, normalspace."

By this point, May was giving the order to a full bridge. The intended recipient, Lieutenant Parnell, echoed an acknowledgment of the order and dropped the Dark Horse out of hyperspace with surgical precision. "Back in normalspace, captain..."

"CCI, report."

Mitch Alexander, manning the CCI station, was busily bringing all their sensors to full strength. Despite a tired look in the abyssinian's face -- it was her allotted time to sleep -- her voice was bright. "Captain, I have that signal. I'm detecting a ship ninety million kilometers off the port bow. It is not maneuvering."

Madison May took the report calmly. "Any signs of weapons? Anything like that?"

"No, ma'am."

"Right. Helm, plot a course to match speed and position. Flank speed."

Since the start of their deep-space mission, Eli Parnell had slowly grown more certain of herself. The soft-furred wolf didn't hesitate. "Course laid in, ma'am."

"Make it so."

All of them were misfits, in their own way. Eli had crashed her previous starship. Felicia was too high-strung for a relaxed job in the Foreign Ministry. Madison May had such a reputation for recklessness that her nickname at Star Patrol Command was rumored to be 'Ace.'

"Because she's that good?" one novice commander had been heard to ask his superior.

"Because giving her orders is like hitting on twenty," the old admiral shot back.

What they really meant was that she was insufficiently domesticated. May was good on her feet. She was good in a tough spot. She was terrible in a dress uniform, making polite conversation at a reception to welcome a trade delegation to the Confederation.

Banishing her to the frontier was good for everybody. A whole ship of problem children, out where they could collect data and sniff around things and hopefully do some useful exploration -- and since they all meant well, it was unlikely that they'd cause too many problems. They might even be able to help out!

When they found their quarry, though, nobody seemed all that optimistic at the sight of the ship.

All things considered, it appeared to be fairly nondescript. About two hundred meters long, it was a curvy wedge that looked, from above, sort of like a guitar pick. A ventral ridge gave it a triangular forward profile, with a flat bottom. Three engines, too. "They like threes," Felicia shrugged. She didn't add any commentary as to what that might mean: the leopard was as puzzled as the rest of them.

"The engines are not active," Mitch added. "I think they might not be working."

"Lifesigns?" Madison asked. She gave the derelict on the viewscreen a pitying look. There was no longer any point in questioning whether the message had been a distress call. It was pretty obvious.

"Nothing that I can see, captain," the abyssinian replied. Nothing was ever so simple, though. "It could be that their hull is blocking our scans, however."

Or it could be that they were so alien that they didn't appear on Terran sensors. Or it could be that they were hiding. Or it could be that they were dead.

Madison May took a deep breath, and tapped her boot on the floor. She might've been fond of rolling dice, but every roll was still the product of a keen mind. The akita described herself as acting on instinct; even she did not always appreciate how much insight went into those gut decisions.

"Hail the poor bastards. All standard channels."

"No response."

Felicia spoke up. "May I, captain?" The leopard's love of regulation clashed often with May's abhorrence of them, but they'd learned to get past it. One nod of the akita's head, and Felicia joined Mitch at her station. "I'm going to echo their message back to them..."

Nobody else on the ship was as quick as Dr. Beltran with languages. The leopard had an intuitive understanding of their structure, and an ability to find patterns in any sort of chaos. Everyone could see her tail starting to sway, and soon her ears perked.

Commander Bradley was the one to ask: "Doctor?"

"I'm getting a response. This one is a lot more complex. I'm going to transmit our standard interlock matrix now..."

A team of Terran scientists invented the first translation-interlock matrix before even first contact. It consisted of a very dense block of data, starting with mathematical constants that were assumed to be universal. Constants were associated to numbers and words. Numbers and words were used to draw pictures. Pictures were used to add more words, and to explain the relationship between them.

By the end, the result was a complete overview of a language's grammar and dictionary. Its effectiveness had been refined with every new first contact; by now, it was a Confederation standard. Impenetrable to people -- but a computer could make short work of it, and it was a good bet that any spacefaring race had some form of universal translator.

"Captain May, we're being signaled," the leopard announced.

Nobody knew what the message would say, but even still Madison grinned. The captain was entirely in her element. "Let's hear it!"

The voice sounded somewhat mechanical, because the translating computer didn't have a good sense of their biology yet. "Is it true? You are... real? Alive?"

"We're alive, yes. I'm Madison May, of the Star Patrol cruiser Dark Horse. Do you require assistance?"

"Madison May, you are our savior," the voice answered. "I am --" the proper noun was rendered as a hiss of grating static -- "and we are pilgrims. We were on the way back home when our hyperdrive failed. Our engines are badly damaged."

"I can tell that," the akita agreed. "Can you transmit their specifications to us? We might be able to help you."

"You -- would do that? You would do that for us, Madison May?"

"The Star Patrol," she declared with a note of pride, "is not in the business of abandoning people to space. Not if we can do something about it."

There were only so many ways to get around a galaxy. The Dark Horse's chief engineer agreed to review the technical schematics of the battered starship in search of an answer. Meanwhile, Felicia took the opportunity to engage in smalltalk with the pilgrims, trying to glean as much information as she could and improve their understanding of the alien language.

Several hours later, May convened a meeting in her ready room. Dr. Beltran was more excited than anyone had seen her before, and looked the part. "I have learned quite a deal about their culture, captain," was the first thing out of her mouth. "They are not native to this sector. They first set out three years ago."

"That explains the wear on their engines," Lieutenant Hazelton grunted.

May turned to her chief engineer. "Shannon?"

"From what they sent us," the raccoon clarified, "three years ago must've been the last time they serviced 'em, too. I could give you a list of what's wrong, Mads, but the list of what's right would be a damned sight shorter."

Hazelton's gruff exterior belied her keen intuition and intellect. An observer had to know to look for the raccoon's bright, twinkling eyes. Madison's prior service with the woman kept her from being fooled: "So you can fix it."

"Sure."

Felicia had listened carefully. "They need to travel another four hundred parsecs, according to their captain. Would your repairs hold that long?"

"If they ain't dumb about it, doc, sure." Shannon spread her paws on the glass table in the ready room, and a hologram of the alien vessel appeared like a fly in amber. "We'll need to scrub and patch the modulators, and then bypass the whole feedback dampening system. If they're careful, they can go four hundred parsecs without that..."

"If they're not?" Madison asked.

"It'll blow the reactor up."

A lot of the problems Shannon faced ended in the possibility of explosive catastrophe. The gathered officers looked unfazed; David wanted to discuss the practicalities. "You can tell them how to fix it? Or would you have to go over there?"

"I'd have to go over there. It's a two-man job, at least. TJ and I can do it, though."

"By yourselves?"

Leon Bader was a muscular German shepherd, with an emphasis on the second word. Generations of family tradition and close attention to the detail of marital lines converged on the consummate guard dog.

He'd been silent through the whole of the discussion. Now he straightened to attention. "I recommend we send an armed escort."

"You, ensign?" David smiled.

"I am the logical choice, sir, yes." Confed protocol allowed for Star Patrolmen to be armed on duty, but Leon was the only one of them to take advantage of this. He was also the only one of them to make regular use of the shooting range.

Mostly, they all considered it a quirk. None of his crewmates thought of the shepherd as dangerous -- just overeager to protect them. Madison May didn't dismiss his suggestion immediately, for none of them knew what they might find beyond the airlock. "Not a bad idea."

"It's not," Commander Bradley allowed with a degree of caution. "But it might not send the right friendly message on behalf of the Star Patrol."

"Like we tried with the Tuul, you mean?"

She had a point; first contact with the Harmony of Tuul had been truly disastrous. "For what it is worth, sir..." Felicia Beltran had staunchly defended the Tuul's pacifism -- before they'd boarded the ship and vowed to destroy Earth. This legacy still clearly weighed on her. "I think it would be prudent, also."

"You said they were pilgrims, doctor."

"Yes, sir. But if my mother's ancestors were as skeptical of pilgrims as they should've, been, well... let us say the history of North America would look very different. And section four of the Diplomatic Protocol Codex authorizes the captain to make an executive decision, in the absence of guidance from the diplomatic officer."

May weighed her options carefully. It was in the akita's nature to be ready for anything, fighting included. "Ensign Bader, you'll go with them -- throw some body armor on, at least. Lieutenant Hazelton, you and TJ should be armed, too. Light weapons."

"Sure, I'll just call it one of my tools," the raccoon snorted. "Long-ranged plasma metal-punch. Unless I can carry a sword -- can I, ensign?"

"Better safe than sorry, Shannon," the akita warned. "We don't have any swords, anyway. The ship's not that old."

Lieutenant Parnell maneuvered the Dark Horse up alongside the drifting freighter, spending so long matching its movements that Madison May finally lost patience and headed down to the airlock. In the twenty minutes it took for the wolfess to finish docking, Madison was joined first by Shannon Hazelton and TJ Wallace, the assistant engineer, and then by Leon and Commander Bradley.

"Good seal and maglock," Parnell told them on the intercom. "We're close enough to be disrupting each other's FTL drives, so I think they're powering down... you should be ready for boarding."

Hearing a soft beep from his suit, TJ looked down to see what it was trying to tell him. "We're getting telemetry, too, if Dr. Beltran has translated these figures right..." The airlock itself seemed to be transmitting. This wasn't all that unusual; the otter had even seen it recommended as a standard, in the past. It was a good way of letting guests know what to expect. "Readings from their life support system."

"And?"

"Well, the atmosphere's a match. It's breathable."

"Keep the helmets on," May ordered. Prudence was not her defining trait, but it could be a virtue. "If that engine is shot, who knows what else might go wrong?"

The airlock slid open on an empty hallway. The alien ship was clean and well-lit -- but nobody had come to greet them. Finally a whirring sound prefaced the appearance of a floating robot with six long legs dangling uselessly below it. "Greetings," it intoned, from a hidden speaker. "May I show you to the engine room?"

Madison was immediately suspicious. "Where's your crew?"

"In the prayer room," the robot answered immediately. "It is part of our culture that they must pray before greeting aliens."

Praying? May had not been through many first contacts, and their last one had gone poorly. The way that she looked at her executive officer was a telepathic way of muttering damned odd before she posed an actual question. "What do you say, number one?"

"Ensign Bader?" David asked.

"I can keep an open commlink, sir."

The three suited crew -- Leon, Shannon, and TJ -- followed the robot through the hatch, and into the pilgrim's starship. Not that there was any real reason to be doubtful... all the same, their faces held a look of apprehensive worry. Felicia, in particular, listened to every status report like a condemned prisoner.

"Mads," Hazelton called in. "We're in the engine room now, and I gotta say this is a little bit strange. I wish you could see what I was seeing."

But what was the point of commlinks and holograms and multispectral scanners if the captain couldn't see what their crew was seeing? David tapped a wall panel, and in an instant it was displaying the inside of the alien ship. The engine room, like the hallway, was spotless and nondescript. "What's going on, Shannon?"

"This engine is in perfect shape. It ain't like one we'd build, but -- these injectors don't need to be worked on. There's a -- what's that, Webby?"

"Hey dudes, it's TJ," they heard the otter's voice, and when Shannon turned to look at him they saw him wave in the hologram. "It's a calibration thing, yeah? They, like, tweaked their mixture in a way that it's... that it kinda looks like a shot modulator system?"

"On purpose?" Before she could get an answer, May shook her head and decided that it wasn't worth waiting. Too many risks, and too little information. "I want you back over here until we know what's going on. Ensign Bader, you take point."

"Yes, sir."

By any objective measurement, the trip back to the airlock took exactly as long as getting to the engine in the first place had. It felt a great deal more suspenseful. The akita was even starting to tap her fingers restlessly when the suited form of Leon Bader appeared. TJ and Hazelton followed.

The robot companion was with them as well. It was a dumb, bumbling thing: shaped like a flat shield, covering a belly thick with complicated machinery, its movements through the air were awkward and sloppy. "Why are your subunits departing?"

"I need to talk to your captain again," May said carefully. She was trying to remember every scrap of her diplomatic education, and only partly succeeding.

"This is very strange," the robot lamented; none of the Dark Horse's crew were in a mood to disagree. "Please do not go. Do not go."

The akita's twitching tail betrayed her difficulty in forming a diplomatic answer. "We'll be back as soon as your captain can explain things. C'mon, guys."

TJ went first. A new sound caught Shannon and Leon's attention, and they both turned to face it. The shepherd ducked in time -- but the chief engineer barely got out a bark of surprise before a second robot barreled into her, lifting her off her feet and carrying her out of sight down the hall.

Leon was back on his feet immediately, weapon drawn; a rapid pivot and a burst of plasma into the underside of the first robot sent it pitching to the deck in a smoking heap. "Captain! Permission to --"

"Over here now," she snapped. Leon might've been a guard dog, with a guard dog's temperament, but the stocky akita had the fierce snarl of a mother wolf and even the shepherd was not up to protesting.

Following orders saved him: no sooner was he into the airlock than the alien ship's hatchway slammed shut. The crew of the Dark Horse -- minus one -- stared in shock. It felt like an eternity to them, but in reality only a few tenths of a second elapsed before David sprung into life. "Find out where she is!"

TJ, a lackadaisical otter from a resort world, showed none of his relaxed upbringing. Tearing his helmet and gloves off, he went to the wall console. "Right. Okay -- uh -- no connection -- gonna try the guard channel... narrow-band... hm. Maybe we can bounce a signal off that robot, if it's not all the way dead..."

The hologram returned. All they could see was a featureless floor. "Well? What's going on?" May took the opportunity to treat every word as a vicious snarl.

"She's unconscious," TJ reported. "Lifesigns are stable, but she's unconscious. Let me try something, here..." A few minutes later, and they stared at a low-resolution three-dimensional image. "Best-guess, from analyzing the light hitting her visual sensors..."

It looked like a good-sized room; fuzzy dots floated through it. One of them crossed into the raccoon's field of view; it was another of the robots. "The hell?" For the moment, May was too confused even to growl.

"I count seventeen of them." Leon had his helmet off, too, so that he could see more clearly. The shepherd's face was deeply lined -- and so was his muzzle, because his lip was curled in anticipation of baring teeth. "We have to mount a rescue, captain."

"I know."

"Sir -- time is of --"

May shot him a look that shut the ensign up. "Leon. Listen to me. Listening?"

"Yes, sir."

"You couldn't have stopped them. I know our security is your responsibility. You do a good job of it -- hell, if you hadn't shot that other thing they might've stolen you or TJ, too."

"Sir -- but..."

Her glowing eyes narrowed. "No 'buts.' We are getting her back, you better fucking believe me. But it does no good for us to rush in. TJ, work with Dr. Beltran and compile every scrap of information we have on these fucks. Every whisper. I want a report in an hour." She wanted the report immediately, in fact, but not everything could be rushed.

"Yes, ma'am," TJ saluted. Felicia, more shocked than most of them, nodded weakly.

"Dave, I need a way to look inside that ship. See what Spaceman Alexander can do to with our sensors and -- ah, hell, chain Barry to her computer until he thinks of something." Barry Schatz, their science officer, was erratic, eccentric and maybe a little neurotic -- but he was smart, properly motivated. "Tell him he has unlimited coffee rations."

"For now, or?"

"Depends on what he comes back with. Ensign Bader, you know where we're going..."

While Madison and the shepherd headed for the weapons locker, David jogged back up to the bridge. Alexander, Barry, and Eli Parnell were already waiting. "Officer on deck! -- commander," Eli immediately followed up. "What happened?"

"Good intentions," the retriever shook his head. "You said we're disrupting their FTL, right?"

"Yes, sir. They're powering their engines, though."

"Can you keep us in place?"

Asked questions like this, the wolf had to go through a checklist in her head. Analyze. Report. Stop doubting yourself. The Dark Horse was a military ship, with more power than the derelict by several times over. It would take skill to avoid overstressing the boarding locks, but... "Yes. I mean, I believe so."

"Keep that damned seal tight, then. Increase power to the maglocks if you have to."

Parnell found the order rather perplexing; the situation had not been easy to follow from the bridge. She thought she'd gathered that their chief engineer had been kidnapped, but why? And by whom? Was the only answer keeping themselves attached to a hostile vessel? "Well... I can do that, sir, but..."

Dave saw that she was confused, but explanations would have to come later. "Make sure of it. Spaceman Alexander, any more luck in scanning that ship?"

"The hull is extremely dense. It's going to be almost impossible."

"Almost impossible is still possible," Bradley told them. "Ensign Schatz, start coming up with ideas."

Barry Schatz, a twitchy young Border collie, immediately adopted his breed's most natural expression in trying circumstances -- a wild-eyed gaze midway between mania and panic. "How?"

"Do that -- that thing you do."

"Thing?"

Mitch Alexander knew. "Where you start babbling randomly and turn into a genius," the abyssinian explained.

The first officer tossed in a carrot, to sweeten the pot: "the captain promised to remove the limits on your coffee ration."

Barry perked up. "For now, or?"

Forty minutes and four cups of coffee later, Barry could feel an answer plucking at the edges of his wired brain. The ship's hull was virtually opaque to everything he could throw at it. He'd never seen anything quite like it -- really, it bordered on armor.

If he made the beam as narrow as physically possible, the scanner was able to make some progress. This, however, meant that it would take time to probe the entire ship -- days, probably. That was time they didn't have: the crew was counting on him!

This did not make the dog comfortable. Barry knew that he had a reputation for rambling, and he knew that his crewmates assumed he simply didn't notice their rolling eyes. He did; he noticed many things. He just didn't know how to fix it. And now that time was of the essence...

"I don't know," he muttered. Mostly, he was talking to himself.

Mitch heard anyway; she was standing right next to him. The abyssinian tilted her head slightly, and curled her tail forward and about her right leg. Their science officer had been quiet for several minutes. "You don't know what?"

"I don't know what I'm doing here." He tried to focus on the results of the scanner, but the numbers failed to make any sense. It was like his eyes were crossed. "They shouldn't be trusting me..."

The feline felt her tailtip quivering. She'd joined Star Patrol mostly out of boredom, not out of any particular sense of adventure. Back home, on the same resort planet TJ hailed from, she could've been lazing on the beach, working some part-time job at a hotel and spending her evenings stoned...

Instead she was locked up on the Dark Horse, and none of them ever seemed interested in getting high except her old friend TJ. Which, in her opinion, was a mistake: they could all use it. Why were they all so fucking neurotic? Was it an entrance requirement she'd missed? Did you need a psychiatrist's note to get into the Patrol?

"But they are trusting you." Why did she have to point that out? Wasn't that clear?

The clarity wasn't the problem for Barry. It was the weight of expectation. "This just isn't... I'm not even sure it's possible... look at this. Look at this!"

Mitch tried. He was gesturing at what, by all appearances, was nothing but static. In her more judgmental moments, the abyssinian assumed that this is what the inside of his head looked like, and she was not particularly far off. "Barry..."

"It's useless," he sighed, convinced that their faith in him had been misplaced.

Increasingly, the feline was inclined to agree. Saying that, though, would've pushed the twitchy dog completely over the edge. "Just... calm down?" It was the best thing she could think of to say, and the look they exchanged said both of them knew it was dumb. "Look, take a step back and... I mean, I dunno. You want me to get you some more coffee?"

"Maybe... I'm not sure that would be good for my heart, though."

Mitch snickered. "Have you ever considered just drinking plasma right off the power couplings? You're so wired all the time anyway."

"I know, I know..."

"We ought to find a little reactor and just hook you up," she kept going, hoping to lighten the mood.

Aside from being scatterbrained, caffeine was really the Border collie's only vice. Granted, he indulged to a degree that they all found unhealthy -- not just for his heart. Left unattended, he would drink coffee until his whiskers were twitching like he'd been electrocuted.

Like he had a little reactor hooked up to...

His racing brain skipped a step and stumbled. Then it looked, to see what it had tripped over, and went ahead and sent a signal to the hapless dog's muzzle. "Ha!"

Mitch was marginally less confused than the collie, but only marginally, and there wasn't a universal translator smart enough to help out. She knew her joke hadn't been that funny, just an attempt to break up the tension a little bit. "What?"

By that point Barry was no longer even aware that a joke had been told. "You're a genius," he muttered -- also not aware that he was saying that, nor that the abyssinian was staring at him. Now all he could see was the sensor readouts. Patterns in the static... hints in the noise...

All of it opaque to anyone but him. Mitch knew better than to interfere.

Dave also knew better, but when he saw Mitch Alexander take a step away from the console and shook her head his intuition told him something was up, even though she herself seemed to be perplexed. Barry was lost to the world.

"What happened?"

"I have no idea," Mitch said.

"It was Mitch's idea." Barry started his explanation, five minutes later, by contradicting her. David sighed, and braced himself for what was to come. Mitch, too easygoing for much concern, took it all in stride. "I was trying an active sweep of the inside of the hull, but it's much too dense for that. On the other hand, their reactor has a characteristic power signature, and we can scan for that! Now, the first problem was that the forward sensor array can't be adjusted as finely as we'd need, but..."

Barry hadn't noticed his first sigh, so Dave did it again. He didn't notice that one either. "But what?"

"But! Think about it! The lateral comms transceiver!" The Border collie swept through diagrams with shaking paws, hoping to make his explanation clear despite the baffled looks of his companions. "It's not actually designed for it, but if we adjust the frequency of the oscillator we can get it to amplify the input from the port multiscanner!"

Dave rubbed at his neck. "Mitch?"

"He's retuned the comms antenna to listen for EM interference," she said with a shrug, which did nothing to help either of the two understand why.

"And because the lateral transceiver is a phased array, we can read signals from any bearing!" The advantage of being good-natured was that Barry was rarely frustrated by his crewmates' inability to follow along. "Assume that they're running power conduits through their bulkheads, like we do! Some probabilistic analysis and..."

Sometimes, Dave felt that he understood Maddy's need to always jump right to conclusions. It cut out a lot of headaches: "And you can see the inside of their ship?"

"Oh. Well... no. Not exactly."

Down in the armory, May was running up into headaches of her own. The Dark Horse was reasonably well-equipped, for a vessel of peaceful exploration. Like a child at Christmas, she went for the larger boxes first. "Tactical support machine..." 'Rifle' was hidden beneath the dust.

"Model J," Leon explained when she opened the box. It dated from an old period in the Star Patrol's history -- a more aggressive period, when it was considered de rigueur to bring along heavy weaponry. A dark, ugly period, according to the textbooks.

And an exciting, fun one, according to Leon. May tried to be more reserved, although she agreed at least with the 'exciting' part. The machine gun weighed sixteen kilograms, and came with a bipod. "Another plasma weapon, like those carbines?" She hoisted it up carefully, testing how it felt in her paws.

It looked good on her. In the same way as a fashionable dress or a silver locket, May simply looked good with a support weapon clasped in her arms. They both knew it. Leon grinned: "No, it's more archaic than that. Tungsten flechettes. Very, very fast tungsten flechettes."

May leaned the gun against its case and went foraging until she found the ammunition that went along with it. A box of two hundred rounds, which had a very pleasant heft. "Like this? Will this work?"

"It depends. It takes a few kinds. Solid penetrators and frangible tips... incendiary, too." Leon acted as though he knew it inside and out. May didn't know that the Model J had been retired from service a hundred years ago, and that Leon's only experience was in video games. Besides, he was up for gaining some experience...

"Should we take it with us?" She held the box out to him, and he took it.

Leon, who could appreciate the heft too, turned the magazine over to inspect it. Solid, armor-piercing rounds. He was trying to think of how much damage they were likely to do: spaceships were not kindly environments for firefights. "I would love to, sir. But we'll have to be more careful than that. This'll go right through the hull, if we're not careful, and in a hostage situation..."

Madison took it back, and replaced the big machine gun carefully in its case. The akita's lip curled with her next realization: "And, of course, we can't use any of our weapons that were designed for use against biologics..."

The shepherd shared a growl with his captain. "Because they're robots," he finished. Despite the opinion of his crewmates, it wasn't exactly true that Leon only liked problems he could solve by exploding them. He also liked problems that were vulnerable to lasers, and narrow bolts of plasma.

"What else do we have?" Madison should've known the weapons manifest by heart, but the akita tended to believe in herself as a 'big picture' thinker. She had no objection to fighting -- but all the most important fighting took place at a range of thousands of kilometers. If you were close enough to see your enemy, you'd made a mistake.

"Light sidearms, the rifles, four of these machine guns... sixteen reconnaissance drones -- unarmed of course -- two mobile deflector generators..."

"And this is?" Her attention had been caught by one of the dusty crates, which was enticingly large. Not quite big enough to be a vehicle, but maybe a portable rocket launcher or something else chaotic.

Leon had noticed the crate before, and had never been able to determine its provenance. "It's an Ulver Boarding Contingency Unit, sir," he explained. "I don't know what that is, either. My guess is it's a mobile generator."

Madison May scratched behind her right ear. She leaned closer to the crate, and brushed away more of the dust. "It says... 'in case of boarding or other emergency, break glass and turn handle.' Is this an emergency?"

Emergencies, perhaps, were in the eye of the beholder. To Leon's mind the capture of Hazelton was a serious problem, although not perhaps as serious as an imminent reactor meltdown or a hull breach. On the other hand, what was the worst that could happen? "Your chief engineer is in the custody of hostile robots."

"That is pretty serious," May agreed. Really, she just wanted an excuse. The Star Patrol was lazy and weak, but they weren't expressly stupid and the odds were low that they would've installed, for example, an atomic self-destruct device that could not be shut down once triggered. Or a chemical agent that would put them all in a coma so that they couldn't reveal any Confed secrets. Or a swarm of nanobots.

Her impulsive instincts were checked by a buzzing alert from her communicator. "Captain, it's the bridge. We've been able to get low-resolution scans of most of the interior and we can pinpoint where Lieutenant Hazelton is. That's the good news."

Leon and May exchanged a look. Madison knew her XO well enough to guess that the 'bad news' was going to be serious. After all, he wouldn't have called her otherwise: "And the... not-good news?"

"Well. Hm. Shannon is still unconscious, but according to chatter we can pick up, she's going to be interrogated."

"They said it would take about a half-hour to get the machine ready," Dr. Beltran added on the line. "If I'm translating it right. Also, if I'm translating it right, their exact phrasing was that she was being processed for, um. Slicing."

Slicing? Madison glared at her communicator. "Are you translating it right?"

"None of the suggested synonyms are any friendlier, ma'am."

The akita twitched, and growled to nobody in particular. "We're working on a plan. Meet me by the airlock in five minutes, Dave. May out."

Leon cocked his head. He'd already grown to appreciate the akita's decisiveness, and her ability to get out of tricky situations. She was the best of both worlds, to him: May didn't always want to go in guns blazing, but she sure as heck was willing in a pinch. "A plan?"

"Well," she muttered. "We have five minutes to come up with one, don't we?"

"An all-out assault will be tricky. We don't know what they're armed with, sir, only that in close quarters shooting could be a problem. Ricochets, unintended damage... plus, they're robots, so we have to assume they're going to be quicker and stronger than us..."

May heard all of it, ignored most of it, and growled again. She looked at the crate. She looked at Leon. Leon looked at her. They both looked at the crate. "Well. Fuck, let's do it," she decided, and smashed the glass over the handle. Despite centuries of disuse it turned and pulled smoothly.

There was a hiss of released air, and condensed fog curled from the opening. A light on the inside of the crate, hidden by the thick vapor, began flashing an eerie, impatient red. "Cryo?" Leon blinked. Sensitive electronics, perhaps.

No.

The crate, UBCU-53, had been packed carefully in 2590. It had no best-if-used-by date because its creators had assumed it would be used almost immediately, against the Pictor. And if it was not used, that it would be returned when the trial program ended. And if it was not returned, that it would run out of power naturally and be discarded.

They had not assumed that UBCU-53 would be stacked in one of the few cruisers not to be boarded by the Pictor. They definitely had not assumed that the ship would be mothballed, and forgotten about for more than two hundred years with the power left running. And none of their assumptions included, as variables, the probability that the program would be terminated and marked so highly classified nobody would even know its name.

They should've, though, because the probability was quite high.

The crate's cover was, with the seal broken, no longer held in by vacuum but by the bulk of its two hundred kilogram weight. It wobbled -- and then, disturbed by an impact from within, careened with a deafening clang to the floor.

Leon and May jumped back at the same time. Leon went for his pistol; May went for the empty space on her belt, and decided to begin following the shepherd's example on remaining armed at all times. The vapor started to clear.

And, fueled by an extremely nasty headache and a rush of adrenaline, UBCU-53 sat up, and jumped from the crate. His irritated growl carried two hundred years of morning breath, although if either of the two Star Patrolmen had needed another excuse to jump back there were many.

At first glance they were looking at a dog. Leon's attention went to his fiery red hair, and the bulk of his staggering muscles. May's went to his fearsome teeth, and his blazing orange eyes. Like May he had a curly spitz tail; she wasn't looking there, for other reasons.

"Orders, commander," the dog growled. "Let me at 'em."

"Well... get dressed, first," May suggested for a starting order, remaining remarkably calm. "And tell me your name?"

The dog looked at his arms. His torso. The rather prominent distraction between his legs. Clothes would definitely have been in order, it was true. "I do not have any. Clothing is tactically irrelevant."

"It's like being in junior high school, sir," Leon tried to offer a defense. He also was not looking -- for reasons of modesty, naturally. "You can't really help it, it's --"

"That didn't happen to me in junior high," May pointed out, and turned back to the spitz. "Who are you?"

"Sabel Thorsen, ma'am." He straightened up and saluted; standing completely straight, his 1.6 meters still put him shorter than May. "At your service."

"Okay. What are you?"

"I'm an Ulver Boarding Contingency Unit, Mark One. I was designed to provide emergency support to starship crews in the event of boarding actions," he answered quickly. He was working through a script, in his head, although this was all entirely subconscious to the spitz. "I presume we have been boarded by the Pictor."

His growl made the prospect of fighting them seem so enticing that May felt a little guilty about having to let him down. "That war ended some time ago, you'll find..."

"That's why you're out of uniform? Well, no matter." Sabel cracked his knuckles so sharply that even Leon winced. "Tell me who to fight."

"I'll explain," May said. "But you're going to have to get dressed first. You're going to have to wear something."

Sabel Thorsen looked back at the crate that had been his home. "Is there going to be fighting?"

"Oh yes."

"Good."

Sabel had never been programmed in the art of clothes. He did, however, have an instinctive, genetic knowledge of how to put on a suit of powered armor. The composite plates and their biomechanical muscles added to his already substantial bulk. It made him look slightly like a machine... which wasn't entirely inaccurate.

He didn't really know much of this. His designers had not seen fit to explain why they'd grown his model line, trusting that it would be more or less self-explanatory. "Who are we fighting?" he asked, when he had the helmet clamped to the rest of his armor.

"We don't know."

"Can they be shot?"

"Sort of," May offered, and gestured that Leon and Sabel should follow her. "I think you've been asleep for a while."

"How long?"

"Well, it's 2804 now."

Sabel paused, and twisted his head. The amplification in his suit gave his voice a nice, growling edge that he was rather pleased with. "The Confed let me sleep for 214 years?"

"Pretty much."

"Typical," Sabel snapped. "There wasn't anybody to fight in that time?"

"They don't like it." Leon Bader shrugged, in what the shepherd hoped would be taken as a gesture of sympathy. Wearing powered boots, Sabel was still slightly shorter than Leon was, but Leon knew that this wouldn't stop him from being punched through an airlock.

"Typical," the spitz sniffed once more.

"Yes, yes," May agreed. "Now, my starship is on a mission of peaceful exploration beyond the Confederation frontier. We've just answered our first distress call. Alien robots have stolen my chief engineer, and they're readying her to be... sliced."

Sabel bristled. "Robots!" He hated robots. Twitchy metal things who didn't always mind if you pulled their limbs off. "I can shoot 'em."

"So can I," Leon reminded them, lest the shepherd be forgotten. He was still smarting from the shock of watching Shannon Hazelton's abduction. "However, there's some complications we should be aware of..."

David Bradley saw the approaching trio and cocked his head. The retriever performed a mental count. He knew where everyone was. There should've been only two people. "Uh. Maddy?"

"Hi Dave." The akita tended to live by the seat of her pants, which made it easier for her to get through situations like this than her more formal first officer. Aliens want to destroy Earth? Escape and sabotage their faster-than-light ability. Chief engineer kidnapped? Prepare for a rescue within the hour. Defrost a long-forgotten spitz? "This is Sabel Thorsen."

"I punch things," Sabel explained his role in the universe simply. Everything was simple for an Ulver Boarding Contingency Unit. His augmented vision swept over Dave Bradley, and decided that the retriever posed no threat.

"We found him frozen in the weapons hold, sir." Leon did not live by the seat of his pants; he also did not like leaving his superiors in the dark. "Probably since the ship was decommissioned."

Sabel cocked his head. "Decommissioned?"

"I'll explain later," May promised. She needed to have an explanation first, after all. Maybe Shannon would know? "What's the plan?"

Dave sighed. He'd known that one was coming. In the end, Barry's quick thinking had given them a fuzzy skeleton that showed the inner structure of the vessel, but not with very much detail. "Technically, Maddy, you said that you had one."

"I was being optimistic."

Bradley turned to the holographic display on the wall and called up their low-resolution map of the pilgrim's ship. "So here's what we're up against. Shannon's suit appears to be here." He tapped. "It's a room towards the stern of the ship. We can get there relatively easily, by traversing this corridor here..."

A straight shot. Leon cocked his head to the side, and tried to envision the process in his head. "Problem with that, though, sir." Thinking tactically, at least. "Every transverse bulkhead is another chokepoint and another hatch we'd have to get through if they went to zed. Which I would, if I were them."

"Fight our way through?" May asked, saying it like she already knew the answer. "Okay, fine. Is there a closer approach?"

The ship seemed to have a double-hull, as proper starships did. It added another unfriendly barrier they'd have to cross. At least the processing room was close to the edge; that was something of a blessing. "There are no airlocks that we can see." The akita was showing no outward signs of stress, but Dave was worried. They were running out of time: Beltran had not been able to get the pilgrims to answer any hails, and that meant twenty-five minutes until... well. Slicing.

"Sir," Sabel spoke up.

"Mr. Thorsen?"

The spitz liked simple answers, so he made one up: "Enter here."

He'd drawn a straight line between the outer hull and the inner room. "No airlock," Dave repeated.

"Make one."

"You want to EVA, breach their hull, breach it again, stage a rescue operation, and then..." As May went through it, step by step, her skepticism faded and she became increasingly enamored of the idea. It was an ace sort of plan. "Can you EVA?"

Sabel nodded sharply. "Designed to."

"My suit's airtight, but it can't maneuver." Leon was still wearing his armor.

"I take you with me," the spitz replied. He didn't know what to think of the German shepherd, yet, but there was a lot to be said for the appreciably gung ho demeanor in spite of his comparative scrawniness. "We hit them before they know what is coming."

There was gung ho, though, and there was suicide. Leon didn't much care for seeing space up close. The other option, though, was to be upstaged: he was going to have to swallow his dislike of the great vacuum. "Suggestion..."

"Suggest fast," said Commander May.

"Let's breach this hatchway, as well. Let them think that we're going to come in this way... we can use the recon drones to mix things up a little. Hopefully that will draw their attention while the rescue's in progress..."

"Good idea." That was the problem with tactical officers, May thought. When you needed them, they were invaluable. But you didn't always need them, and they were loathe to recognize this. "I'll get going. Anybody else in the rescue party?"

"Nobody else is suited," Leon pointed out; he didn't intend for the double meaning, but Dave and Madison picked up on it anyway. "I guess it's me..."

"Good luck, ensign." She had faith, anyway; May had faith in a lot of things. She also had a lot of work to do, so she pointed the two warriors forward, to another airlock.

They had to stop back in the weapons locker, to gather some equipment. The two dogs had a similar outlook on the world, and a similar dedication to getting things done as cleanly as possible. Leon did, however, feel the need to confess his desire for a more carefully thought-out plan.

Sabel Thorsen thought the plan was just fine. It was fine because it was simple. Complicated plans had too many moving parts. It was too easy to break them -- the spitz knew this, because he'd been trained to break things.

"How are you with ranged weapons?" Leon was not a particularly skilled conversationalist, so he went to the one interest they were likely to share as they strode to the airlock. "You have much experience?"

"Depends on your meaning," he said. "I have only been alive for twenty minutes."

"Really?"

Sabel didn't feel any unease over the question. The program engineers had filled his brain with everything they thought he was likely to need, so that he could wake up ready to go. "It just means I don't have memories. The program made sure I still know how to fire a weapon."

The shepherd, on the other hand, had needed to do all of this the hard way. "I have to tell you..." They paused at the inner hatch of the forward airlock, and he tried to think of how to be diplomatic while he typed in his access code. Unfortunately, diplomacy had never been a strong suit: "I've never heard of your program."

Sabel narrowed his eyes. Simple answers: had they lost the Pictor War? Unlikely. Had the Confederation renounced hand to hand combat? Leon was evidence against that. "Impossible."

"I'm serious." Leon knew Confed tactics inside and out; dogsicles weren't part of them. "It must've been a one-off... a prototype, or something that didn't work out..."

"You're calling me flawed?"

The hatchway slid shut behind them. The airlock felt very quiet. And confined. "I didn't say that. I wouldn't say that without knowing you." Leon tapped the side of his helmet, and the head-up display inside came to life. "The Confed must've had their reasons..."

Sabel Thorsen didn't have enough information to judge that, and disliked all of the possibilities that immediately came to mind. "The Confederation has a history of being confusing and irrational."

Leon snickered. "You can say that again."

Why? Sabel didn't know that, either, but Leon was an officer and they were on his ship. "The Confederation has a history of being confusing and irrational," the spitz repeated dutifully.

The shepherd cast him a sideways glance that was missed behind his helmet. "Right." Leon glanced over his commlink setup until he was satisfied. "Commander, we're ready here."

"Ready here, too," May answered. If Leon glanced to his upper-right, a little picture appeared, showing him what May was looking at -- the other airlock, the useless recon drones, and Dave Bradley awkwardly holding a carbine. Poor Dave: good head on his shoulders, Leon reckoned, but out of his league. "Fifteen seconds."

Leon started a countdown. "You understand the plan, Sabel?"

"Of course."

"I'm in charge," the shepherd reminded him.

That didn't bother Sabel, who had been programmed to follow orders.

He grabbed Leon by the wrist as the airlock hissed open -- and then jumped. The shepherd's weight didn't amount to much; certainly, it was nothing the thrusters in his suit couldn't handle. Ahead of them, the sturdy hull of the pilgrim's ship loomed: Sabel instinctively turned, adjusting their course. It was only a few dozen meters... but the alternative was drifting, forever, and Sabel had slept long enough.

Leon had only gone without artificial gravity for a second or two before he immediately began to miss it. His stomach had dropped out, and the dense diamond carpet of stars was thick and oppressive. Only a sense of duty kept him from asking what the hell he'd signed up for out loud.

The pair thumped solidly into the hull. Sabel's suit had electromagnetic feet, and Leon's had nanoscopic microfibers like a gecko, but the effect was the same. They were standing, on the hull of an alien starship, and safe. "Commander, it's Bader. Touched down," Leon reported in curtly.

"Stand back," Sabel Thorsen suggested, as he began to lay down a strip of breaching cord. He set it in a circle that was nearly geometrically perfect. Circles were nice and simple, too. "Done."

"Touch it off," Leon nodded. He looked away, and let his hologram tell him what was going on. It was an extremely exothermic reaction. Had he felt like watching, and had he not gone blind, the shepherd would've been impressed by just how much better it worked than the eco-certified stuff the modern Star Patrol shipped with. There was something to be said for nostalgia.

Inside Sabel's helmet, the spitz was living just such a nostalgic life. He could see a holo-map of their target, if he wanted, and he could hear Leon's voice. Mostly, however, his vision was clean. His neural augments talked directly to his helmet, but only when it was strictly necessary. You didn't need a hologram to see when the burn had finished, nor to give the hull plating a shove so that it tumbled into the inside noisily.

The inner hull was separated by four meters of scaffolding. Sabel and Leon looked at it, pondering. Leon was pondering how long it would take to set another line of breaching cord. He was pondering how to deal with the robots on the inside, and the sudden loss of pressure. He was pondering firing arcs.

Sabel was pondering how easy it would be to jump. "Can you cover me?" he asked.

Leon tilted his head. "Yeah?" Checking to make sure his suit was secured to the outer hull, he unslung the machine gun and powered it on. And then he watched as Sabel crouched, and leapt for the inner hull.

He landed with deceptive grace, and certainty, and all the energy of three hundred kilograms of spitz and spitz armor. The armor absorbed the impact, and Sabel went for his belt. The plasma knife drew power right off the suit's reactor -- more than enough for him to sink it straight into the material of the inner hull. Air started to hiss forth; he ignored it, cutting methodically. Simple.

When he was finished, he simply kicked it. Hard. The rush of escaping air blew it out into the space between the double hull. Some internal hatchway had slammed shut -- it only took a few seconds for the atmosphere in the section to make its brutal escape. Leon was waiting, machine gun at the ready. Nothing.

Sabel replaced the knife, and adjusted a control on the arm of his suit. It pointed to combat mode. When he turned to look at Leon, he saw the shepherd highlighted with a green halo. When he turned back to the ship, he could see the faint outline of another green halo that was supposed to be Shannon Hazelton.

When he stepped inside, there were lots of red shapes.

Leon slung the machine gun, switched to his carbine, and hopped along the scaffolding to join Sabel. Robots -- at least two, coming down the hallway to their right, and six more from the left. "Weapons free," Leon barked -- his favorite thing to say, or hear. He took careful aim, and sent one of the floating robots careening into the wall.

The armored spitz reached for his back, and pulled out his own plasma carbine. On reflection, he pulled out the other, too. With one in each mechanically augmented paw, he fired at the robots advancing on them. Stupid robots. They didn't even fight back!

"Get down!" Leon shouted, and the pair dropped in time to miss the volley of bright orange bolts that burst over their heads. Despite the energy of the order, he was not firing in a panic. Panic was bad. A three-round burst from his carbine knocked the floating robot out of commission.

"More of them," Sabel grunted. Crouched, he had better aim; he was firing his carbines at the same time, keeping the recoil from twisting him off balance. "At least twenty."

"This way's clear." Leon took two deep breaths to consider their tactical situation. They could not afford to wait. They no longer had the advantage of surprise. And although the robots were vulnerable, there were also many of them. "You should be able to get to the room where they're holding her, right?"

"Naturally."

"I'll hold them off here." The shepherd gripped his weapon tighter, and failed to give any impression that this would give him trouble. "Go!"

Sabel's helmet pointed the way in helpful colored arrows. The spitz jogged along the path, and pointedly ignored the divots being gouged in the deck plating by the heavy suit. It was, he decided, their fault for not building things properly.

The door was closed, and locked. Complications! Growling, he stepped away, and fired into the handle. It sparked, and drooled molten metal from the holes that had been punched into it. This did not make it open, but Sabel hadn't planned on being so lucky. The holes made for a convenient grip: he leaned into it, and shoved.

An anguished squeal greeted the effort, as the metal protested what was being done to the fine engineering of its mechanism. Finally, seeing that the spitz was not to be dissuaded, it gave up -- lurching open to reveal a deserted sickbay. The robots had found better things to do.

Shannon Hazelton stirred, when he scooped her suited body up. Behind the glass of her helmet, the raccoon came to fuzzily. The first thing she saw was the ceiling... then the wall... the ceiling again -- a... face? "Who are you?"

"Sabel Thorsen," the spitz said. In complete honesty, he didn't really know much more than that, particularly not if two hundred years had gone by.

"Cool," Shannon muttered, and passed out again.

Down the corridor, Leon was regretting his optimism. The robots floated with their legs down, meaning that their undersides were generally exposed. He wanted to aim for this, and generally hit it -- but they'd begun to adapt to their vulnerability by bobbing and weaving erratically, and that made it harder.

Also they were shooting back with irritating frequency. He leaned around the corner and took out another one, but that left at least five that he knew of, and probably many more. A scuffling vibration behind him alerted him to more incoming: he glanced quickly, and immediate relief flooded him. "She's okay?"

"Alive, but immobile." Sabel could see that Leon was having difficulty, so he set his burden down and pulled the carbines out once more. "You?"

"Somewhat pinned. They're all coming from the stern."

Sabel cocked his head. From the outside, the heavy armor made this look ridiculous -- Sabel wouldn't have cared. All he cared about was the mission, and the robots imperiling it. But, since they were leaving anyway... "Concussion grenade," he suggested.

"Do it."

There was no kill like overkill: Sabel took two of the grenades, checked to ensure that they were in command-trigger mode, and tossed them expertly down the hall. A chatter of excited robotic analysis came as a flash of agitated light-pulses, in the half-second before the grenades obliterated themselves, and the robots as well.

The trick was in the name: the grenades packed a powerful high-explosive charge that was designed to produce a destructive blastwave. With most of the ship's atmosphere drained to space, there wasn't much air to propagate the concussive shock, but the explosives themselves did a nice job of taking out a big chunk of corridor.

Sabel was happy with the result.

So was Leon, particularly because it meant they could bring the mission to its close. There had been no fire from the bow, and he liked to think that this meant they would not be facing any resistance. Besides, it was only a few meters.

Naturally they turned the corner to find a final two of the damned things.

These were unarmed. They had, however, turned their shields forward, and by floating in midair they were blocking the corridor and cutting off access to the entryway Sabel had cut in the hull. Electronic voices filled the two dogs' helmets. "Desist."

"Out of my way," Leon countered.

"Desist," the robots repeated. "Return also the subunit we acquired from you."

"Lieutenant Hazelton? Go to hell."

"Return the Lieutenant Hazelton we acquired from you."

Leon grunted, flipped his carbine up, and fired. The plasma bolts struck the armor plate, sputtered, and melted away. He did it again and, seeing his confusion, Sabel did the same thing -- no dice. "Wait one," the shepherd growled, and reached for the machine gun at his back.

Sabel was not interested. With a snarl, the spitz charged. Three hundred kilograms, focused entirely on his bunched fist, collided with a very surprised robot. The punch reverberated up his arm, buzzing through the artificial muscles. It felt good. Cathartic.

Of course, now he had a flailing, malfunctioning drone stuck to the end of his paw. He swung in a broad arc, using the wall for leverage, and slammed it like a mace into its companion. The impact ripped his glove free, and the two machines went tumbling out the hole in their ship.

Leon watched the display with some degree of shock. "Not bad..."

The spitz growled, which was his way of reminding Leon: fucking robots. His augmented arms lifted Shannon's body back up, and together the dogs made their way back to the outer hull.

All told, by Leon's estimation, the operation had lasted ten minutes. "Commander, we're on our way back. Mission accomplished."

"Good work," she told him. And sounded like she meant it, although her voice wasn't particularly grateful -- probably because gratitude might've implied a lack of certainty in the preordained outcome.

Lieutenant Parnell had been kept waiting, and as soon as they decoupled from the derelict -- before any robots had a chance to upgrade their protests to something more destructive to a starship -- the Dark Horse raced away and jumped into hyperspace.

Shannon woke up, well-rested, in time for the debriefing that May convened in her ready room. The akita was plainly overjoyed to have Hazelton back with them, despite her history with the raccoon. She stopped short of hugging the chief engineer -- but just barely.

Not everyone was so thrilled. Dr. Beltran, in particular, looked less like a bridge officer and more like she was waiting in a courtroom.

May got right to business: "So, what did we learn today?"

Felicia Beltran's shoulders fell. Nothing in her diplomatic training had prepared her for two miserable first contacts in a row. "Caution?"

"Caution," May agreed, and wrote it on the wall. Personally, though, Madison wasn't bothered. Looking over her shoulder, at the leopard's flattened ears, she decided a clarification was in order: "But let's not be too hasty. You did the right thing, Dr. Beltran. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard."

"And you've proven something else, which is that we can translate and interact with the people we meet," Commander Bradley added. "That should be noted, too."

May wrote 'Successful conversation' on the wall.

"That ship was built with materials I've never seen before." To the rest of the crew's disappointment, Leon hadn't brought any of it back -- so their science officer had no samples to test. The Border collie could only conjecture, and he'd already been told that what he thought of as conjecturing others thought of as rambling. "The outer hull was fantastically dense."

Madison May liked hearing things like 'never,' because it reminded her that they were exploring, after all, and that justified many of their temporary hardships. "Never seen before?"

"No, ma'am." Barry shook his head. "It has some of the same properties as 5540-grade kuritanium, but it doesn't respond to x-ray bombardment in the same way. My best guess is a stressed kuritanium-manganese alloy -- I know that there was a research program investigating the possibility of combining the two under extremely high temperatures in --"

Bradley held up his paw, because otherwise Barry would be talking for the next hour. "It's strange. We understand."

The Border collie frequently found himself facing this problem. He was not particularly good at articulating his thoughts, which meant that people tended to miss them in his meandering attempt to explain. He forced himself to concentrate -- forced himself with such energy that his ears flicked back, and his brow furrowed. "I mean, sir, that -- well -- think about the, ah, on the bridge, sir. When we crossed the frontier, we were still operating under the assumption that even if we met new civilizations, we could... we could scan them with our existing technology. That doesn't seem to be the case."

In general, Madison ignored the collie. It was too difficult to follow his thought patterns, and she didn't have the patience. This time, though, his meaning was fairly clear, and he happened to have a good point. She wanted to keep the number of variables to a minimum: "Upgrade our sensors?"

"Easier said than done, ma'am. Takes time... testing..."

'Can't scan properly,' May wrote. "Dave?"

He stepped back from the table, until he could lean against the cool bulkhead behind him. "It's not something we can fix right away. Mr. Schatz, I want you to kick off a project with Spacemans Wallace and Alexander. Figure out how we can be more flexible in using our existing equipment and adapting new kinds. We'll be out here for awhile, after all. Make weekly reports directly to me."

"Yes, sir."

"We've gotten lucky so far. Even this encounter could've been worse," the golden retriever sighed. "We don't even understand everything about our own ship. Which..."

"Yeah." May understood immediately what he meant; they'd briefly discussed it. "Come in," she spoke towards the door.

Sabel entered, looking as awkward as he felt. The clothes that Leon had lent him did not fit particularly well. "I report as ordered," he declared, and stood stiffly next to the ready room door.

"This is Sabel Thorsen," May introduced him for the benefit of Dr. Beltran and Barry Schatz.

Felicia had never seen anything like it. The stocky, muscular dog, with his barrel chest and shock of fiery hair, looked like an extra from a Viking saga. The leopard prided herself on being observant, and on knowing as much about different cultures as she could. His was a mystery -- and why the hell hadn't she seen him before? "Where did he come from?"

"He's an Ulver," Barry spoke up before he could help himself, and kept going for similar reasons: "They aren't supposed to exist."

Madison May's head jerked, and she bit back a surprised half-growl. "You know what's going on?"

"Sort of... I'm not supposed to," he muttered, too late. "It came up when I was researching the Confed's molecular biology programs."

"Keep talking," May commanded. Her paws went to her hips.

"It's classified..."

May allowed her impatience to have a voice: "Talk, or we'll go back and get you sliced. You like talking."

The Border collie folded his ears back. "It was a black project kicked off during the Pictor War. We lost a lot of ships to boarding actions, and at the time the Star Patrol did not have an effective army, and they didn't believe that they would have time to train them. I guess the situation was quite desperate. So they investigated the possibility of... manufacturing marines with combat training, um, imprinted on them. They made a few hundred in 2589 and 2590."

"What happened?"

"There were..." Barry avoided looking at the Ulver. He didn't want to offend Sabel, after all. "Ah, well, particularly in the first run there were... issues."

Madison gritted her teeth, and took a deep breath to keep from shouting. "'Issues'?"

"There were problems, and a..." The collie coughed and averted his eyes from everyone. Stared at the wall. "A few deaths were involved."

"Oh, boy." Dave didn't like the sound of that, although, by all accounts, Sabel Thorsen had acquitted himself well on the pilgrims' ship. "Sabel?"

"I don't know." Knowledge about his program had been considered tactically irrelevant. Mostly, the spitz knew that there were things in the universe that needed punching, and it was his job to punch them. "I had not heard."

"After the tide began to turn, and there was the incident on Achinsk -- that wasn't an Ulver thing, but the facility was overrun and had to be taken out from orbit -- uh, after all that the program was closed, and all the records were sealed. And then the Garden Act banned all genetic modifications on Confederation member species, and so... that was that. They were all presumed... lost." Save for the example still standing at attention in their ready room, and Barry wasn't entirely comfortable about that.

May and the others took this in slowly. "Right." The captain was the first to speak. "What was supposed to happen after they were used?"

"In the pilot program, they were going to be returned to the facilities that made them for further tests and things like that. In the field, the final projects were to be..."

"Deactivated," Sabel answered. He was very nonchalant about it, even sanguine. In truth, his sense of self-preservation went only so far as was required to successfully complete his mission. "The sarcophagus will deactivate me."

"Permanently?"

"Of course. After a successful use, the Contingency Unit would only be consuming valuable life support resources. You would activate a new Contingency Unit if reuse was necessary. It guarantees optimum performance."

Madison, who also knew that things in the universe occasionally needed punching, wasn't happy with the sound of that. "That's rather ghoulish."

"It is -- was," Sabel Thorsen corrected himself, since apparently he was the last of them left. "An elegant plan. When we're deactivated, what we've experienced is downloaded and combined with the existing database. Then it can be flashed to all the unopened units."

"In effect," Barry went on. "Every Ulver would have the acquired tactical knowledge of every other one that had gone before."

"With no say in this."

"Of course not." Sabel thought in terms of absolutes because those were nice and simple. 'Of course'; 'of course not.' He couldn't change them, in any event, so there was also no point in being especially bothered. Angst was a tactically irrelevant emotion. "Created beings have no rights under the Confederation charter."

"I see..."

"I can self-terminate in other ways if you'd prefer."

May scowled. "Let's hold off on that, yeah?"

Sabel nodded. He had to assume that the akita had her reasons, even if they were mysterious. Perhaps he'd ask Leon; the shepherd was a straightforward thinker also. "Very well."

"I'm going to take you on and provisionally assign you to... well..." May didn't know the right word for it. "Inside shooty stuff. Ensign Bader is our tactical officer, so you'll report to him. Leon?"

Leon had been paying close attention, because -- same as all of them, except perhaps Schatz -- he didn't like the implications of what the spitz had said. Also, the way he'd taken out the robots was still impressive. That one, smooth movement, like it had all been coordinated by computer... Really, although he knew that Sabel was the product of science, he harbored a secret hope that the Ulver might be able to teach him some of those tricks. "That sounds like a good idea, sir. I'll make sure he's qualified on all of our light arms and take an inventory of what's in his own armory."

"Welcome aboard, then, Sabel. If you'll have us?"

He decided that the akita was being generous, but this did not solve all of Sabel's confusion. It did not, for example, clarify why she was accepting him despite the neurotic Border collie's explanation. It certainly didn't explain why she'd ask for his consent, although he had nowhere else to go except back out an airlock. Maybe it was best to consider such events as another tactical scenario. Tactically, his continued presence evidently benefited the Star Patrol. And that was good enough: "Of course."

They would become close, Leon and Sabel. Both could already tell it. The first step was settling him in. The Dark Horse had plenty of spare rooms, although not all of them were habitable. Sabel tried to explain his lack of need for pillows and blankets, but the protest fell on deaf ears.

So did his protest about the food offered to him. "This substance is complex."

"Complex?" There were a lot of words for the ship's rations; 'complex' was not the one Leon immediately reached for. The freeze-dried pizzas, for example -- nobody knew where they came from, and they had no expiration date. Some of the crew had speculated that they must've been found in a vault, probably sealed and with a biohazard stencil on the door. "It's just pepperoni." Well, kind of.

"Excessive ingredients."

Rather than hashing it out, they agreed that he could have some of the chicken-analog protein slurry that came from one of the nozzles in the Dark Horse's autokitchen. At least it was simple, and it didn't require Sabel to learn the employment of the 'fork' Leon brandished. "Soon, though," the shepherd promised.

"Soon..."

Sabel wasn't so certain, and the shepherd could see it. "Sure. That, and ice cream. That's pretty tasty."

"Tasty?" Sabel knew what the words meant; he had an internal dictionary. "Ice cream sounds nutritionally problematic."

"Strictly speaking, but it's something we like here. We'll get you brought up to speed on that pretty quick. Your duties are going to be the easiest thing for you." They both knew it, because it was also the easiest thing for Leon. "You'll need to learn ice cream, and the rec room, and putting up with Parnell's weird games. And finding a hobby."

"Noted."

"Plus, we'll need to get you clothed. Right after dinner."

The warrior spitz conceded this, too, only on the most pragmatic of grounds. The fabric of the shirts Leon had donated was intended to stretch, but Sabel's body pushed it beyond the limits of decency. "It was not in my education," he found himself forced to admit. "Non-armored clothing was a tactical irrelevancy."

"I know," Leon said with a sigh. "Think about it like this, though. Star Patrol wants to be seen as very polite. No shooting at things, no punching things..."

Sabel didn't understand it, either. "Strange."

"Isn't it? So a uniform is a little like camouflage. It'll help you blend in."

He'd been preprogrammed with centuries of combat experience, but just like the ship itself Sabel now found himself careening past the frontier of his knowledge. Camouflage? Pillows? "I feel this may be difficult."

"Why?"

"I am not like you." Having said it, Sabel appreciated that, even if they weren't identical, the two were kindred spirits. "Do you find your crew..."

The word he was looking for was 'satisfactory.' The word he was really looking for was 'pleasant,' but it would be awhile before that was in regular rotation for the spitz's vocabulary. Fortunately Leon understood the meaning. "They're a good bunch."

"You like them."

Even though they could be trying. And, in the interests of honesty, Leon tried them as well, and knew this. "Yes. And besides, they need a guard dog or two. They think they don't, but... well... you saw what happened. This is the second time, by the way. Bet they'll start listening to my advice to go everywhere armed..."

"They accept you."

"And they'll accept you, too." Leon reached across the table, and patted his new friend's shoulder. "Really. It's fine."

Knowing that his program had been terminated, though, still bothered the spitz. "I disagree. Please consider. I have been alive for less than a day, since being put to sleep two hundred years ago. I do not know 'fork.' I do not know 'hobby.' I have no clothes. I am the last of my race, Leon. I do not even have a country to call home."

The shepherd, listening quietly, rested his paws on Sabel's, just barely able to cover them. "You have us, though."

Sabel flattened his ears, and spoke in the simple answers he'd been made to confront by circumstance and the threat of ice cream: "Do I? I am... alien to your society. Forgotten by my creators. An unfinished product. A rough prototype. Wild. Abnormal."

"Quirky," Leon agreed. "Unconventional. Unsuitable for polite company. A prodigy at unseemly skills. A deviant."

"Er... yes."

"Yeah, you'll fit right in."