We spent the next few hours checking our scopes to see if there were any ships in the vicinity. Nothing pinged, but I didn’t trust the data, not unless this was all some wild goose chase. I suppose it was remotely possible that someone other than the Brotherhood had answered our message, sending us out to the back of beyond as a practical joke, but I doubted that as well. What would be the point? I mean, I guess it’s possible some individual is perverse enough to do it, but every fiber in my virtual body told me that message was legit.

They were out there somewhere… waiting. I was certain of it.

“How much longer are we going to just stand by before we broadcast?” Raven finally asked me.

Sighing, I turned to face her. “I suppose we can’t put it off any longer, can we?” I asked, though the question was a rhetorical one. “Otherwise, what was the point of coming here?”

“My point exactly,” she agreed. “So what are you waiting for?”

“Because once we pull that trigger, there’s no going back,” I said quietly. “I’d like to know something about them before I take that last step.”

She made a pointed look at the screen. “They don’t appear to be cooperating,” she said dryly, “so I’ll ask again. Just how much longer are you planning to drag this out?”

I didn’t have an answer for her, not a good one anyway, but truth was I was scared. I was taking an enormous leap of faith doing this, without the backing of my clan or its leader. What happened next could have a profound impact, not just for Terrans as a whole, and we Avatars in particular, but for the entire galaxy. You shouldn’t make a move like that unless you were sure, and I wasn’t. Not yet.

But Raven was correct. Just how much longer was I going to dither on this?

“You’re right,” I reluctantly agreed, before bringing up the contact protocols and double-checking them one last time. I was stalling, I knew that, and I was fairly certain she did as well, so finally I just closed my eyes and pressed the button. “Signal is active,” I told her, as I waited for the other shoe to drop.

I didn’t have to wait long. Moments later, icons began appearing on our screens, as if out of nowhere. We could only stare at the display in a state of shock as they powered up and began maneuvering towards us, cutting off the lines of retreat.

“Where the hell were they hiding?” Raven demanded as we watched them grow closer. “How could they just appear out of thin air like that?”

“They must have been powered down,” I intoned. “They might even have access to stealth technology we’re not aware of.”

She gave me a worried look. “If the Chell have tech like that, does that mean the Troika does too?”

“Lord, I hope not,” I said fervently, though if the Troika had access to that sort of scientific expertise, why hadn’t we seen it before? Why wasn’t it used during the Battle of Sonoitii Prime? I had to believe if it had been available, they would have used it, anything to avoid the crushing defeat they suffered at the hands of the Alliance. Was it something new then, developed in secret prior to a counterattack? Or had the Brotherhood kept their toy all to themselves?

Another icon appeared, but this time it wasn’t a ship. “We’re being hailed,” I told her. “Last chance to back out.”

“Our last chance was about an hour ago,” she countered. “You’d better answer them.”

She was right, damn it. “Here goes everything,” I said, taking a deep breath as I activated the transmitter. “This is the independent ship Friar’s Lantern,” I announced, using the nom de guerre we’d decided on for our recent acquisition, “and we come in peace. We just want to talk.” Raven and I waited to see if they’d respond.

Moments later, we got our answer. “Friar’s Lantern, we detect no life signs aboard your vessel. Drop whatever shielding you are using to mask your biosignatures, or we will open fire.”

“They think it’s a trap,” I grimaced. “I’d hoped to forestall telling them who and what we are, but I don’t think we have a choice.” Raven nodded in reluctant agreement as I transmitted another message.

“Our ship has no shielding,” I explained. “There are only Uploaded Personalities aboard.”

This time, there was no immediate reply. “I guess they weren’t expecting that,” I mused.

“What do you think they’re doing?” she asked as the minutes dragged on.

“Deciding what to do with us,” I predicted. “They must have been expecting flesh-and-blood types. That we aren’t must have thrown them a curveball.”

“So what’s that mean for us?” she prompted.

“It could go a couple of different ways,” I replied. “Either they believe us and set up a meeting, or else they don’t believe us.”

“And if they don’t?” she insisted. “What then?”

I sighed. “Then they’ll probably open fire and destroy the ship.”

“Well, that’s not good,” Raven said unhappily. “Any way we can improve the odds?”

“Nothing leaps to mind,” I shrugged as we waited with growing trepidation. Almost an hour went by before they finally contacted us again.

“We order you to stand by and prepare to be boarded,” they informed us. “Make no efforts to resist, or we will destroy your ship.”

“... Boarded?” Raven all but shouted. “What the hell?”

“I guess that was fairly inevitable,” I grimaced before keying the mic. “Just give us a few minutes to get Life Support operational,” I answered them. “Right now we’re running with an inert atmosphere.”

There was another pause, though this one was nowhere near as protracted. “Ten minutes, and not a minute longer,” the voice insisted, before cutting off.

Now that surprised me. “Huh,” I said to myself, as I started venting the excess nitrogen and bringing up the O₂ levels, “I didn't think they’d care about that.”

“What’s going on, Al,” Raven demanded, “and why are you surprised they’re waiting for you to bring the air plant back online?”

“Because if they’re even half as paranoid as I think they are, there’s no way they’d come aboard and breathe our air,” I explained. “There could be some sort of pathogen, or maybe they think we’d try to poison them. It doesn’t matter. If I were them, I’d stay suited until I was back on my ship.”

She suddenly looked thoughtful as she considered that point, while I monitored the ships surrounding us as they closed in. Three of them disgorged boarding shuttles, with each of them making for one of Friar’s airlocks. It looked like they were planning a simultaneous assault, hitting us from three directions at once, but I hoped it was just another one of their “Security Measures”, and nothing more. If they were simply being cautious, I’d do all I could to assist and ease tensions.

If their intentions were more sinister, I had a few surprises in store. Odds were we’d never get the chance to use them, though.

It was ten minutes exactly when we felt the simulated jolt of their shuttles docking on our virtual bridge. I’d programmed the simulation to mirror conditions on the physical bridge as closely as possible, and it looked as if we were about to learn if my efforts had paid off.

All three inner doors opened minutes later as they cycled through the airlocks, their weapons at the ready as they cleared the ship. Just as I’d suspected, they were suited up. They were professionals, searching the compartments for hidden weapons and assailants, while another team logged into the Engineering room and ran diagnostics, looking for any signs of sabotage.

I had my screensaver program up and running, the one with my warmest smile and unfurled wings, waiting for them to make contact. I watched as several Chell tromped past the viewer while they inspected the ship, sparing me a brief glance as they investigated, before apparently deciding I was harmless.

Oh, if they only knew…

… anyway, there was one minor detail I neglected to mention. If you were to scan the ship’s database specifically for Digital Personalities, you’d get one hit. One. Raven, as a simulacrum, wouldn’t register. If I’d appeared to the Chell with her at my side after they’d completed their scan, they’d think I was a nut, and who knows where that train of thought leads? I had no intentions of finding out, forcing me to twin myself with one half of my gestalt conversing with Raven while the other half prepared to negotiate with the Brotherhood. Luckily, I had the capacity to spare. Once they’d searched Friar’s Lantern from bow to stern, they finally turned their attention to me.

“Why are you here?” one of the suited figures challenged.

Okay, this is where it gets complicated. Given the current situation, I was now running a “Split Screen” to keep Raven and the Chell separate. The Chell saw me, and me alone negotiating with them, while Raven saw the both of us speaking with the Brotherhood. It took constant monitoring, but splitting my resources two ways was well within my skill set. If I were dealing with over seven, though, I couldn’t maintain the illusion. The only potential downside was if Raven tried to speak with the ersatz Chell she was seeing directly, but I could spin that if I had to. I could create a false narrative for them to respond to, all the while having a separate conversation with the authentic versions on my own.

The problem was, the longer I maintained that fiction, the more the two versions of reality diverged. I’d have to bounce back and forth between the two, always keeping in mind which storyline I was following and not accidentally dropping hints from the other one. I could manage it, but just to be safe I’d cautioned Raven not to speak to the Chell unless it was absolutely necessary, camouflaged as a precaution for her safety. She seemed to buy it for now, but who knows how long that would last?

And the Chell representative was still waiting for an answer.

“We have a common enemy,” I told him. “We’re building an alliance against the Troika, and the Brotherhood would be invaluable in that struggle, as uniquely placed as you are. I came here hoping that you and I could find common ground.”

If there was a reaction to that, it was too subtle for me to notice. “How did you learn of us?” he asked, more insistent this time.

I’d known all along this question would come up, and I’d prepared for it. A lie told now would likely get us killed, but the truth came with its own dangers. It was a calculated risk, but what other choice did I have?

“You murdered at least half a dozen Terrans that I know of, perhaps more,” I said evenly. “I know why you did it, and under other circumstances I’d be doing everything in my power to see justice done.” I took a deep breath and spread my virtual hands wide. “But we are willing to put all that aside, in the hopes of building an alliance between us.”

I waited as the Chell processed what I was telling him, while I wondered what the hell brought me to this point. Maybe it was time to rethink some of my life choices.

The Chell turned to one of his subordinates. “Bring it,” he ordered, and then strode off, out of sight.

“Bring it?” Raven asked, bewildered. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” I told her. “Maybe they’re planning to have one of their own pilot the ship somewhere.”

She started to respond… only to shout a warning as the Chell began tearing the bridge apart, blasting away at the terminals and computer data links with their weapons. “Al! What are they doing?”

That was a damn good question. If they just wanted to destroy the ship, there were easier ways to go about it. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their destruction, not at first glance, but when I pulled up a virtual map to track their efforts, I quickly saw a pattern.

One that was about to bite us in the ass if we didn’t get moving.

“Take my hand!” I thundered, grabbing hold and pulling her out of there, leaving her more confused than ever. It wasn’t the virtual location that was the problem. Our bridge recreation was still in place and operating just as I’d programmed it to. No, the problem lay in our physical location, and that was something I wasn’t used to worrying about.

In any ship, computer networks run throughout the vessel and are linked in at multiple points. What the Chell were doing was systematically destroying the ship’s systems, driving us away from the central computer and towards the peripherals instead. If we hadn’t run, if we’d stayed put while they smashed the subsystem housing our programs to scrap, we would have been destroyed as well. They had to know what they were doing, that their actions risked our very lives, so what the hell…

… I didn’t recognize the trap until it was too late.

They’d hounded us into the Navigation Array’s backup memory, cutting off other avenues of escape as we fled for our lives. Once inside, they cut the sole remaining datalink, imprisoning us within the storage unit. That’s when I lost my eyes and ears, leaving me with no way to know what was happening in the outside world.

Raven grabbed me by the collar. “What’s happening?” she howled. “Why are they doing this?”

I struggled to think, trying to put myself in their position. “If they wanted us dead, they could have already done so,” I said slowly, reasoning it out, “so we have some sort of value. That’s good; it means they’re not in a rush to finish us.”

“Then what the hell were they doing, shooting up the ship like that?”

I hadn’t understood that either, not at first, but as they drove us into memory storage and sprung the trap, it suddenly made perfect sense. Perfect, terrible, horrifying sense.

There was only one reason I could think of for them to do that, and when I realized what it was, I reached out and wrapped my arms around her, and held her tight.

“We’re carry-on baggage,” I said bitterly, “and once they take us back to their ship? They’ll destroy this one. We won’t know for certain until I can get a link back to the outside, but right now, as things stand?”

Bowing my head, I said quietly, “... there’s a better than even chance they’ve just taken us prisoner.”