“So where do we go from here?”

It was a good question. Raven and I were both deep in our cups after learning the disappointing truth about the Precursor system… the truth being that it wasn’t the Precursor system. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, believing that a Yīqún was capable of anything except inflicting pain and sorrow.

I mean, it tried to fucking kill me. That should have been a clue, don’t you think?

I considered the question for a moment, and then shrugged. “I suppose I should head back to base and bring Chris up to speed about everything I’ve learned,” I sighed. “Hopefully, she won’t have me shot on sight. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

“I see.” Raven examined the contents of her glass. “And where did you plan on dropping me off?” she asked. “Or was that going to be a surprise?”

I winced, realizing yet again I should really engage my brain before I open my mouth. “Of course not,” I struggled. “I just… I mean… it’s just that… fuck.” I looked at her helplessly, hoping for some guidance, but she simply stared back at me, letting me twist in the wind.

“Look… I admit I haven’t given that a lot of thought,” I said, “but in my defense, we have been a little busy lately. So, I don’t know. Maybe I should ask you what you want?”

“Not spending the rest of my existence being hunted like an animal would be nice,” she said coolly. “Do you think you could arrange that?”

You ever have a conversation where you know that no matter what you say, you can’t win? I’d been having a lot of those lately.

“We just need to find someplace that’s safe,” I told her. “It’s a big galaxy, after all. There’s bound to be something somewhere.”

“Remind me again how long you Terrans have been looking for a new home?” she fired back. “How’s that going, by the way?”

“Don’t go there,” I snarled. “You have no idea what we’ve suffered.”

“In fact, I do,” she answered. “You uploaded that information into my database, made them a part of my memories. But here’s something you haven’t considered: as bad as humanity’s situation may be, at least you have each other. Where are my peers?” she demanded, “where is my family?” She looked away for a moment, her thoughts suddenly distant. “The only thing that even comes close in this galaxy are the ghosts of the Yīqún,” she hissed. “Should I claim them as my clan?”

“I really wish you wouldn’t, we’ve got enough problems.” I ran my hand over my face as I struggled with the question. “Raven… I don’t know what to say. I don’t want anything to happen to you; I mean, I owe you my life, several times over. I don’t have a simple answer I can just trot out on demand. Hell, I still haven’t figured out how you became sapient in the first place.” I gave her a helpless look. “Don’t suppose you know how it happened?”

“No,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “I get occasional flashes of my life before… snapshots, moments frozen in time.” Her eyes met mine. “Most of them involving you.”

“That makes sense,” I admitted. “So, what changed? What is your first genuine memory as a... whatever you are?”

There was a long silence.

“My first conscious memory,” she said at last, “is you shooting me in the heart.”

Well… fuck. What can you possibly say to that?

“... I’m sorry,” I mumbled, bowing my head.

“Yes, well, water under the bridge,” she said blithely. “I don’t know how this happened. I can’t explain it. All I know is that I have no intention of giving it up.” The stare returned with a vengeance. “Ever. For anyone.”

“I don’t have the answers,” I said finally, “but I promise I’ll make finding a way to answer them a priority from now on. I can do that much, at least, but until then we need to come up with some more immediate goals. Anything spring to mind?”

“Besides putting as much distance as we can between us and this system?” She thought for a moment. “We definitely need to decide what to do about the Brotherhood.”

“What can we do?” I asked her. “All we know is that they exist. We don’t know their names, the locations of their sanctuaries, their short- or long-term goals… nothing. Without more information…” I shrugged.

“We know about the Eleexx, and their plans regarding the Chell,” she pointed out, “not to mention the fact they’ve been harvesting the Yīqún for their software.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I mean, isn’t that dangerous?”

“Insane is more like it,” I agreed. “Even without their physical bodies, you and I saw just how unstable that thing was. I learned a long time ago that the only law you could ever truly count on was Murphy’s.”

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” she recited from memory. “I take it then, the Eleexx aren’t devotees of that philosophy?”

I snorted into my glass. “Hardly. They’re convinced they’re the smartest ones in the room. They’re certain that they’ve accounted for every variable, and that nothing could possibly go wrong.” I shook my head in disgust. “Idiots.”

“Idiots they may be, but that still leaves us with the same question, Alphad,” she retorted. “What do we do about the Brotherhood… assuming we find ourselves in close contact again, I mean.”

I sighed, shrugging in defeat. “I wish we could have brought them over to our side,” I said unhappily. “Given how close they are to the Tu’udh’hizh’ak, they could have been our ace in the hole. Only problem is they’re too paranoid to trust anyone outside of their circle, and while I understand their reasons, I don’t see how we could ever make it work. Besides, now that we know their secret, they want us dead. So that’s a problem.”

“Still not answering the question,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Fine… then we pass on what we know to Chris and let her deal with it. She is the Clan leader, after all. If this isn’t a ‘Big Brain’ moment, I don’t know what is.” I smiled at her as I refilled my glass. “See? Problem solved.”

“My hero,” she said, her voice practically oozing sarcasm. “How does the Clan get along without you?”

“I’m sorry, did you have a better idea?” I fired back. “It’s a quagmire no matter what we do, so my a professional advice is that we steer clear of those lunatics and let someone else stick their head in the noose.” I grimaced and then relented a bit. “We tried, Raven. It didn’t work. Time to cut our losses and move on.”

She sighed and slowly nodded in agreement. “I suppose. Just seems like a waste, is all.”

“That’s because it is,” I agreed. “Welcome to the wonderful world of espionage, where almost nothing works out like you hoped, and chaos reigns supreme.”

“Yeah.” She took another sip from her glass and then set it aside. “Then let’s get out of this corner of the galaxy and find something a little less lively.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I chuckled, reaching for the navigation controls.

I set a course that would take us back towards Chris and the clan, since I didn’t have a better destination in mind, and neither did Raven. I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to do with her, though I feared she was right about how other Terrans would react if they knew the truth. I needed time to think and come up with a plan, something that served the needs of both worlds.

Unfortunately, the universe seemed to have other ideas on the subject.

“Uh-oh,” I heard her gulp nervously. “Alphad? I think we’re in trouble.”

I slid over to the console section she was monitoring. “Is that what I think that is?” she queried.

There was a sudden sinking feeling in my chest as I nodded. “If you think it’s a bunch of ships on an intercept course, then yes… it’s what you think it is.”

“Damn it. I was afraid of that.” She turned to face me, her eyes wide. “What do we do?”

“Simple. We run.” I moved back to navigation and punched up a reciprocal course away from the oncoming vessels, heading back the way we’d came. It bought us some time, but nowhere near as much as I’d hoped. “See if you can narrow down who they belong to.”

Raven immediately went to work, comparing the profiles and drive signatures against the ship’s database. The answer popped out a split-second later. “Well, this isn’t good,” she muttered. “According to the computer, they’re Tu’udh’hizh’ak.”

“Elder Brother must have called his buddies.” I grimaced before pulling up the star charts. If I could just find a nearby system to hide in, maybe we still had a chance.

“Alphad, they’re increasing speed,” she warned me. “They’ll catch up to us in roughly twenty minutes.”

“Redline the engines,” I ordered as I frantically searched for a safe haven. The closest system I could find was the one we’d just vacated, so I adjusted course and pointed her in that direction. Maybe I could use one of the gas giants to lose them. “How much time did that buy us?” I asked her.

“Not much,” she answered, “maybe another five minutes.”

“Five minutes? That’s all?” I said in shock.

“They’re bigger and more powerful than we are,” she said unhappily. “I don’t suppose you know a way around that?”

“... looks like we’re about to find out,” I muttered, as I altered course yet again, making for the largest planet in the system while pulling up the data we’d collected during our survey. The sixth planet in the system, it had in the neighborhood of fifteen moons in orbit, along with a pair of faint rings. We hadn’t done a more thorough analysis, as we’d been searching for a much bigger prize, and now I was kicking myself for my shortsightedness. “Damn it, you know better,” I cursed.

“What was that?” Raven asked.

“Just realizing yet again I’m an idiot,” I grumbled as I focused my attention on the moons. The largest one was a real possibility, and as I looked closer at the data, I realized we might just have a chance.

“Okay, I’ve got an idea,” I told her. “If we position the ship here,” I explained, pointing at the moon’s northern pole, “and cut the power output to the bone, then there’s a chance we can lose ourselves in the magnetosphere. The interference between the planet’s magnetic field and the moon’s might just be enough to camouflage us from their sensors.”

Raven barely glanced at the display before adjusting course. “It’s going to be tight,” she said through gritted teeth, taking over the controls and guiding us towards what I hoped would be a sanctuary. I didn’t argue; while I had more experience, she’d already shown me some pretty incredible gifts. I imagine that after turning yourself into dust and infiltrating a system supposedly immune to hacking, piloting a ship would be child’s play.

It was a game of cat and mouse now, as we raced for our destination. For the plan to work, we had to be in position and powered down before the pursuing ships were within range. Even then, they weren’t stupid. If we ducked inside a nearby star system and vanished, the smart money said we were still in there hiding. If they cordoned off the perimeter and began a systematic search, that was it. Sooner or later they’d stumble across us, whether it took a week or a century, and that would be that.

Neither of us spoke as Raven cut the engines and killed the power, leaving just enough to keep us both alive and power the passive sensors. From our perspective, nothing had changed. We were both still sitting in a mock-up of the ship’s bridge, hands on the controls, while looking up into the blackness of space, searching for any sign of our pursuers.

“Think we lost them?” she asked.

“No idea,” I whispered back. Which was utterly pointless, I could have been screaming at the top of my lungs while accompanied by a full orchestra and they still couldn’t have heard me. Some habits are just ingrained. Besides, it felt quiet.

“How long do we wait?”

I shrugged. “Until they leave, or they capture us. One of the two.”

She gave me a look. “Not a lot of middle ground then.”

I just shook my head. “After all that’s happened, do you really have to ask?”

Raven sighed, conceding the point. “So if they do find us, then what? Is there a plan?”

“A plan? Sure there’s a plan. Surrender peacefully and hope they’re in a good mood.” I reached out and took her hand. “We’re out of options, I’m afraid, and deep into ‘Hope and Pray’ territory.”

She thought about that for a moment. “I don’t know how to pray,” she admitted. “I’ve used the word before, but the act itself? It never occurred to me.” Her brow furrowed as she considered the deeper meaning behind the term. “Does it really help?” she said at last.

“Sometimes it makes you feel better, but actual divine intervention? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a coping mechanism, nothing more.”

Raven looked at me, a puzzled expression on her face, and then suddenly it was as if she were a million light years away. I didn’t know what was on her mind until she bowed her head and pressed her palms together, murmuring in a strange tongue:

“... Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ, tat savitur vareṇyaṃ, bhargo devasya dhīmahi, dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt…”

“What’s that?” I asked, curious.

She lifted her head. “The Sāvitri Mantra, from the Hindu faith,” she explained. “It asks the goddess Gayatri for enlightenment, and protection.”

I blinked. “How can you possibly know that?” I said in surprise.

“I know lots of things,” she shrugged. “I have access to all sorts of data.”

That was a concept worth pursuing, but before I got the chance, the proximity alert went off, blaring in our ears. A single glance explained why.

“They’ve found us, haven’t they?” she asked softly.

I nodded. “Let me do the talking,” I urged her. “Maybe if I tell Elder Brother something he’ll believe, he’ll…”

They drowned out the rest of my reply as the coms came to life. “Vessel #6720993-D, you are hereby bound by the authority of the Tu’udh’hizh’ak Empire. Standby and prepare to be boarded.”

“Shit,” I swore, “shit shit shit fuck shit!”

“What’s wrong?” Raven cried out, bounding from her seat.

I pointed a shaky hand at the screen. “Those aren’t Brotherhood ships… these belong to the Masters.”

She was at my side a moment later. “What will they do with us?” she whispered.

I closed my eyes. “Nothing good,” I got out.