In Which Our Heroes Discuss the Plan

“Each ship an island, each one its own. Each lonely heart calls just one chest its home. None of us shall leave, yet none of us can stay. Our ship shall be our home until space is our grave.”

-from “Life Cycle”, traditional spacer song

Yan wanted to hide away in Halen's quarters forever, but her moping period couldn't last. Iri came knocking on the door as Yan sat dolefully on the couch in the living area, paging through the photographs tucked inside Halen's prayer book. She stared down at the faces of his long dead family members, trying to find some meaning in it. There wasn't any, but that didn't stop her from trying.

"Yan, I know you're in there," Iri called. Yan didn't respond. "If you don't come out, I'm going to make Kino go talk with the captains."

"Let her do it, then," Yan said. The door jiggled audibly as Iri tried it, and it opened, rather surprising both of them.

"Sylva broke the lock," Iri said as she came in. She stood in front of Yan, hands on her hips for a second, then stopped down and gently extricated the book and photographs from Yan's hands. "The Echo and Kiss of Death are trading places, and they want us back at Olkye to talk about future plans. Apparently the Redheart made it in."

"I don't want to talk to them," Yan said, thinking about the Green King aboard the Redheart.

"Tough shit. Good job pissing off Sylva, by the way."

"Are you mad at me?" Iri's tone hadn't been harsh, exactly, but she certainly wasn't being gentle, either.

"No, but I'm not going to let you stay in here and cry by yourself forever."

"Why not?" Yan stared down at her empty hands. Iri tossed the prayer book onto the coffee table and it landed with a thump.

"You always feel better when you're doing something. Here's something to do. Go jump the ship, then talk to the other captains."

Yan continued to just sit, so Iri leaned down and grabbed her wrists, tugging her up. "Let's go, Captain."

Yan let herself be pulled to her feet. She felt floppy and numb, but she slowly filed away her thoughts into boxes where she wouldn't have to think them anymore.

"I wish this was easier," she said as Iri led her out of the room.

"No. You don't."

And so it was that Yan jumped the First Star back into orbit around Olkye. There were so many ships in orbit, considering that this was supposed to be an isolated planet. Shuttles danced their stately way between all these artificial moons. The whole place was a hive of activity. There was the First Star, of course; and the empty shell of the Bellringer, which had been in orbit for a while; the Gatekeeper had shuttles docking and undocking from it like flies; the Redheart was spitting out radio instructions; the Hound also had people coming and going; and the Echo watched it all from a far orbit. The Kiss of Death wouldn't be back for another eight hours, but already the space felt crowded, at least when listening to the radio chatter. In reality, all the ships were hundreds of kilometers apart, but it was still probably more ships than Yan had seen together in her life.

Her whole crew, including the visiting Chanam, were on the bridge. Sylva pointedly refused to look at her, Iri seemed fine, and it was impossible to tell what was going on with Kino or Chanam.

After taking stock of the general situation in space, Yan opened up a radio broadcast. She kept her voice as professional as possible, and her thoughts only on the present moment.

"This is the First Star," Yan said. "We are ready to meet and discuss our plans, Redheart."

The Redheart responded fairly quickly. "We are sending a shuttle to you. Be prepared to provide docking information."

This was fairly surprising. Yan had expected that they would either simply radio conference over a secure line, or Yan would be invited onto one of the other ships. "Who is aboard the shuttle?"

"Command team representation, and an authority from Olkye." That was the vaguest possible answer, but it was better than nothing.

"When can we expect the shuttle?"

"Within two hours."

"We will await its arrival. Please keep us updated should your situation change," Yan said, then killed the radio. She looked around at their little group, then focused on Chanam. "Any idea who they're sending?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Doesn't sound like this is about overall strategy. They'd have all the captains if they did." Chanam's Old Imperial was good, but he had to think about the words as he strung the sentence together, so it was a slower than average experience.

"So, specific orders for us, then," Iri said.

"Or another test," Kino chimed in.

Yan didn't know what to say to that. It was all a test, all of it. But it was also all too real. She focused on the practical. "Well, we'll find out soon enough either way. I'll get the meeting room set up. Iri, watch the bridge. Chanam, with me."

Yan didn't wait for anyone to respond, and stood and left. "She was being cold, but she had to be, in order to stay focused. Iri would have been mad at her if she had brought her moping onto the bridge, which was a temptation. Her eyes rested on Sylva for a moment as she headed out the door, but Yan looked away guiltily when Sylva started to glance at her. Chanam scrambled to follow her, and they made their way to the nicest meeting room aboard the ship.

Inside, there was nothing that actually needed to be set up, aside from perhaps making coffee, but that could wait. She really had just wanted to talk to the young Chanam.

Yan sat down at the head of the table and Chanam sat down a few seats away, as though he didn't want to get too close. Although they had worked together closely, been in each other's minds for that horrible period when they had held down the Gatekeeper and killed her shuttles, they didn't know each other at all. It was brutal and miserable, and they had moved as one, but there had been very little personal there. Surface level only.

"How are you doing?" Yan asked, looking him over. His hair was ruffled out in several directions, but that seemed to be a personal choice of his rather than an indication of his mood.

"You'd be better off asking Kino that," he said.

"Why?" Yan asked.

"You know her. Don't know me." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a marble, which he rolled around idly on the tabletop.

"What's your deal?" Yan asked. "I need to know what you're doing on my ship."

The display on the wall of the room, in its idle mode, typically showed a view from the main cameras out into space. On the screen was the planet, Olkye, and nearby, the half wrecked ship that Chanam had originally come from. "They don't want me back on that one for the moment. So they're giving me away."

"Why not?"

"More trouble than I'm worth," he said with a slight smile.

"If I were repairing a ship, I'd want my sensitive on hand to help with the heavy lifting."

"You're not Captain Dreich," he said with a shrug. "She doesn't want me fiddling."

"Is she a spacer."

"Pirate. Yeah."

"And how did she get to be working with you all?"

"I think she married into it," Chanam said, shrugging again. "Husband. Smuggling weapons and such."

"How romantic. And how did you end up on that ship?"

"You want my life story?"

"If you're offering it."

"How much do you know about Banzhing?"

"Had never heard of it before yesterday," Yan said.

"It's just like them." He nodded down at the planet. "Someone snatches up all the sensitives, they work together to hide the planet. Keep it safe."

"And how come you didn't get stuck?"

"Right person found me at the right time."

"Faro?"

"No. The Dark Hands keep an eye on people who travel to the center, they try to pick off a few before they get to that group."

"So it called you in, like the Mother does?"

"That what they call it down there?"

"Yeah."

"Hunh."

They were silent for a second. "So you were found, and then what?"

"Dark Hands put me on a ship, told me I was a sensitive, been working for them for couple years." He shrugged again.

"What about your family?"

"What about them?"

"Didn't they wonder where you went?"

"Probably."

Yan didn't precisely know how to respond to that. She wanted to ask if he wanted to go back to them, but that probably wasn't her business, and she needed to keep things professional, for her own sanity, if nothing else. "Okay," she said. "You're here to watch us, right?"

He shrugged. "I'm not a threat to you. You're not likely to hurt me. Best choice."

"Whose idea was it?" It had been Faro who had shuffled Chanam along with her, but she didn't know if Faro was the one pulling the strings or not.

"I don't know."

"Your ship, the Hound, what's going to happen to it?"

"If they can fix it, they'll keep using it. If they can't, they'll move the stardrive onto that one." He pointed towards the dead Bellringer. Yan shivered. Something about taking the stardrive out of a ship and putting it in a new one gave her the creeps. Instinctively, she reached out in the power towards the First Star's drive, and felt it safe and warm, content and tired down in the center of the ship.

"And you're staying with us until then?"

"Until somebody tells me not to."

"And if I decide I don't want you?"

"Then you can explain that to whoever you report to."

"You don't know who I report to?"

He looked at her with a funny expression. "I don't think there's a single person who knows a single thing."

"That's sure a way to run a military."

"Not my problem."

Yan looked at him and sighed. "You're a kid," she said. "Why am I doing this to you?"

"I'm fine," he said. "And it's not you that's doing anything."

"Might as well be."

His lips twisted into an expression that Yan couldn't quite interpret. "You're good at making things about you, aren't you?"

Yan frowned at him. She didn't think it was appropriate to rise to that provocation by responding. Chanam stood up, pushing his chair out so far that it hit the wall behind him. "We're meeting back here in two hours?"

"Where are you going?" Yan asked as he headed for the door.

"Do you want me to hang around and spy on you?" he asked. "I can do that, if you want."

Yan laid her hands on the table, palm up, in an expression of exasperation. "Fine. Whatever you want."

"Thanks, Captain," Chanam said, and vanished out the door.

Yan probably should have used the two hour grace period she had been given to work, or to make amends with Sylva (who was angry with her), or to talk to Kino (who was back to being a complete black box), or to thank Iri (who was keeping their whole ship functioning), but instead, she did none of that. She made her way down to the engine room of the ship, where on one side the engine that fueled the ship's mundane activities, life support, standard acceleration, and everything else lived. And on the other side, there was the stardrive.

She didn't know why exactly she felt drawn to it. Oh, there were plenty of logical reasons-- it was a peaceful place, no one was going to disturb her while she sat there, it was good to learn about the workings of the ship, et cetera. None of those reasons were anything other than the justifications she pulled out of her brain to allow her to head towards that center. She just wanted to feel close to something that wouldn't care who she was and what she had done. The stardrive was the best she was going to get.

Next to the stardrive, that great, throbbing in the power, she floated. She could feel it all around her, and she had the lights off. It was deadly silent-- the only sound was her own breathing and heartbeat. Though she was absolutely alone, she felt like her mind was drifting out of her body, and she was somehow physically in the dreamspace she had retreated to so often. There, wrapped up in the feeling of that familiar power, she meditated and thought.

She didn't know what was going to happen in the future. There was no way of knowing that. But she could picture the situation clearly, and she imagined herself drifting alone in space, looking at all of the ships as a ghostly outside observer. She felt a moment of weird recognition, as though she was re-experiencing something familiar, but there was no weight or reality to that feeling.

They had had a victory. There was no doubt about that. Taking the Gatekeeper was a major blow to the Empire-- a ship and all her crew were a hard thing to lose-- but it was nowhere near enough. The Gatekeeper was gone, sure, but the Empire had so many more ships.

There had to be more ships on their way now, even as she drifted here and thought. After all, Sid's absence meant that he had left the ship. There were only two places for him to have gone: the planet, or back to the Empire. She didn't know if there had been another ship to come pick him up. She should ask someone that question, because it would provide valuable information. The other ships who had been waiting and watching probably did know, but the amount of information that had been voluntarily shared with Yan was so minimal that it more appropriately could have been called none.

If another ship had been here, there would be more coming, sooner rather than later. Sandreas would want to send backup to this place. Looking out onto her imaginary space, Yan realized immediately that as soon as Imperial ships arrived, the balance of power would immediately swing against them.

The Redheart, the Echo, and the Kiss of Death were all in good working order, but the number of shuttles and pilots that they had paled in comparison to any ship like the Impulse, designed for ship-to-ship combat. Even though they had an unusual number of sensitives at their disposal, they could only hold down one ship at a time, and even then...

Even then, they wouldn't be able to deal with all the shuttles. After all, even the Mother, who was stupidly powerful, could only take out so many as they came down through Olkye's atmosphere. If the Gatekeeper had had even a little bit more resources at her disposal as she sat in orbit, they wouldn't have won at all. It was a scary thought.

She didn't know what the full strength of the Dark Hands was. Possibly no one knew that. The organizational structure, such that it was, seemed to be designed wholly around secrecy and keeping information as contained as possible. The fact that the Redheart hadn't mentioned that the First Star was coming here, that Chanam didn't actually know who he was reporting to outside of Faro, it all seemed like a recipe for disaster. There had to be someone at the top, pulling the strings, but Yan didn't think she would ever meet that person. Maybe she would. The future was a black box.

But the core of the problem was that Yan didn't think that they could win. She didn't even think that these ships could protect just Olkye for anything more than a few years, at absolute most. There probably weren't more ships out there that they could call upon. Possibly there were, but she felt like she would have seen some sort of evidence of them.

The Dark Hands had some minor victories. Falmar was one, if that could even be considered a victory, since the majority or whole of the planet's original population had been wiped out. She knew people on Tyx III were holding out, though that almost certainly wouldn't last, and here they had taken the Gatekeeper. That, as far as she knew, was it. That was all the Dark Hands had ever done, as the Empire swept up planet after planet.

It was disturbing, all of it.

Yan had joined the losing side of a war. If it even could be called that. Certainly, in the face of the Empire, it was more like watching a slow slaughter.

She thought she knew why this felt so hopeless. If all the planets that remained, or most of them, decided that the best course of action was to hide themselves like the Mother did, there would be no resources coming off of them. No supplies, no people, no ships, no communication, probably. There would be no aide going to other planets, and their citizens would remain isolated in the hopes of keeping them alive. To allow anyone, anyone to know the location of their planet was to invite disaster. That disaster had befallen Olkye so quickly. Who knew how many of these quietly hidden planets there were?

Yan was sure that they could be tracked down scientifically, with some sort of comprehensive gravity survey, of how other stars around were affected, maybe. Or perhaps the Mother and the others had some way of dealing with that issue. Or perhaps one missing star's worth of gravity could easily be chalked up to a black hole, or at such vast distances wasn't noticeable. Yan wasn't an astrophysicist, and her knowledge of planetary motion extended exactly as far as knowing how not to crash her ship into a planet.

She wanted to know exactly how the Dark Hands had come about, how they had gotten together all of these ships and sensitives.

It didn't matter. The real issue was that even with more ships, coming from more planets, this was not a war that could be won. She had to think that the Dark Hands knew this, and they were just fighting against the slow death because the only other alternative was too lie down and give up.

She kept returning to the idea that there was no way to defeat the Empire from the outside, that any change would have to come from within, and she felt distressed once again that she had given up any hope of that when she had left and abandoned her position. She didn't want to think that she should have left Kino to die, but that might have been the only real way to affect change, if she had stayed.

The past was the past, and there was no going back to it. She drifted in the quiet of the engine room, and felt the power of the stardrive hum around her. It felt like home. It felt like a friend.

Yan, Kino, and Chanam met the group of people coming aboard in the bay. Sylva and Iri had declined to come, Iri because she decided she would be better off on the bridge, and Sylva because she didn't want to talk to Yan. So that left this new, odd trio waiting impatiently for the shuttle to settle down in the bay, and for all the air to filter back in, and for the shuttle's doors to open.

Yan resisted the temptation to reach out with the power to check who was inside, because she thought that would be both rude, and likely to make her annoyed. The shuttle opened. Yan steeled herself to see the Green King (Jeepak, she reminded herself again), and was therefore prepared when he stepped out of the shuttle and looked at her.

"Welcome back aboard," Yan said through gritted teeth.

"Thank you," he said, and turned around to help someone else out of the shuttle. Yan's breath caught in her throat. There, coming out of the shuttle, was one of the Mother's bodies. Yan, in any of the languages that Yan spoke regularly, would have called the body a man, but she knew that the Mother had no conception of that. She was shorter than Yan, and probably in her mid thirties, with skin that had probably originally been pale but now was a leathery tan.

"Yan," the Mother said. "You came back." She spoke in the native language of Olkye, and Yan's mind stirred, remembering it with some difficulty. It had been planted in her head by the Mother, but then the Mother had taken so much away from her when she had left, it barely crawled back to her mind. The Mother struggled a little in the zero gravity environment, but pushed off the side of the shuttle and came over to Yan. Kino and Chanam looked at her warily.

"I did come back," Yan said, also in that language. She wasn't sure how to feel. She had wanted to come back to the Mother, part of her always would yearn for that, she knew. It wouldn't ever be possible, though. That time was over. The Mother reached out her hand, and Yan grabbed it. The power passed between them, and Yan felt the aching, familiar grip of the Mother's power, and the vast ocean of feelings that existed between them. But the Mother made no move to grab her, to pull her in. It might have been easy, if she had tried. The lack of trying was what made the ache gather in Yan's heart. The Mother didn't want her back.

She knew it was for the best, that she didn't have to resist the Mother's power, but still, it hurt.

"You know each other?" Kino asked.

Yan extracted her hand from the Mother's, and turned to Kino. "This is the Mother," she said. "The one who guards Olkye."

"One of my bodies," the Mother said, this time speaking in Old Imperial, a language that she had taken from Yan's brain, so long ago. The words came about as smoothly as Yan's use of the Mother's language did, but they were comprehensible, which was all that mattered.

"Mother, this is Kino Mejia and Chanam..."

"Just Chanam," he said. "Pleasure." He sounded slightly bitter. Perhaps this was because of his own experience with a group mind on his home planet.

"I thought you weren't going to work with him," Yan said quietly, nodding to Jeepak, who was closing down the shuttle.

"Times change," the Mother said. "We're better allies than we are enemies. You seem to know this as well."

"Unfortunately," Yan said.

"How did you come here?" the Mother asked. "Why?"

Yan looked at her. "I learned what Etta taught me," she said, hoping that the Mother would understand what she meant, without needing to go into the excruciating details.

The Mother smiled and touched Yan's arm. She didn't resent the touch. "I am glad. I missed you. I still miss you."

Yan wanted to say that the Mother could take her back. She wanted to say that so badly, but she didn't. "I missed you, too."

"Are you done reminiscing, or can we go talk?" Jeepak said, coming over. He was frowning, looking at the Mother and Yan with an expression of deep distaste. Yan supposed they had threatened him, but the Mother wouldn't have ever actually hurt him. Either way, that was done, and they were all working together now, for better or for worse.

"Follow me," Yan said, and led the group out of the bay to the meeting room they had set up.

"Sylva and Iri are here with you?" the Mother asked as they walked.

"Yes," Yan said. "Why do you ask?"

The Mother smiled faintly. "I like them."

"Really?"

"You liked them. Your thoughts didn't leave me."

"Oh," Yan said. "They're on the ship. They just didn't think it would be productive to attend this meeting."

Yan felt the Mother's power reach out and ghost through the ship, presumably feeling for the other two people aboard. She nodded, satisfied, when she found them. "I'm glad you have them with you."

"I am as well. How much do you know about what happened?"

"Enough," the Mother said.

"She knows what she needs to," Jeepak said. "Same as anyone else."

Yan opened the door to the meeting room and let everyone inside. They settled around the table. Yan and the Green King both looked at the seat at the head of the table, but Yan was both the captain of the ship and slightly faster, so she was able to sit down in it before Jeepak could take the place. It was a petty move on Yan's part, but she had no desire to give him more power than he already had.

"So," Yan said. "Thank you for coming. I am glad that we're going to get a chance to talk about the future. I have a lot of questions, as you may imagine." Kino nodded, and Chanam looked at her as though incredulous that she expected any answers at all. "What was it that you wanted to discuss?"

Jeepak spoke up first. "On behalf of my employers," he said, "I would like to extend my thanks for your contributions to our recent victory. I would also like to add my own personal thanks for not betraying us."

"Yet," Chanam said.

Yan raised her eyebrows and looked at him with as much of an authoritative expression as she could muster. She didn't need subordination from the kid who was sent to spy on her. That could really only hurt her credibility at this table.

"Yes," Jeepak said. "I would like to think that you wouldn't betray us, not after you're so deeply committed, but you never know."

"The future," Yan said. "What are our plans?" She wanted to get out of this dangerous ground, and she wanted to know what the Mother was doing here.

"We came to ask your advice," the Mother said.

"About what?" Yan asked.

"You know the military strength of the Empire," the Green King said.

"Approximately."

"What would it take in order to hold them off?"

"More than four ships," Yan said.

"How many more?"

"I don't know," she said. "The Empire is committed to not letting you live, though."

"I already knew that," Jeepak said, voice bitter. "How many ships would we need."

"I mean you're not going to be able to stop them if they want to kill you," Yan said, a note of panic in her voice. "If the Empire decides that you're too difficult to deal with, they would rather destroy your star than leave you alone." She didn't know if this was true. After all, the Empire had never lost badly enough that that was a concern.

"What about Falmar?" the Green King said. "They gave up there."

There was a slight silence around the table. "Image," Kino said. "They're obsessed with image."

"So?" Jeepak asked.

"If Falmar was destroyed, people would know something strange had happened," she said. "It was already a colony. It was just a dead one."

"They could have passed it off as wanting to ensure that the contamination wouldn't spread off planet," Yan said hesitantly.

"But it would have spread with us," Kino said, gesturing down at herself. She said all this so matter of factly, but the fact was that her whole life had been ruined, her home planet destroyed by a man-made disease. Yan remembered something that Kino had said so long ago, that she was glad that she wasn't responsible for condemning a planet to death. At the time, Yan had thought that it was mostly about Kino being glad that she and the other refugees not being vectors for diseases, but after so long, the words carried a different meaning for Yan.

"I'm sure that the Empire had its reasons," Jeepak said. "I suspect that they were hoping that we would visit Falmar often, and that they could use it to monitor or follow us." He shrugged. "We weren't as stupid as that, though."

"Given that," the Mother said. "Should we evacuate our planet?"

"There's no way you'd be able to," Yan said. "Not in time, anyway."

"We would start now, and we have the Gatekeeper. She has a big capacity."

"There's at least forty million people on that planet," Yan said bitterly. There were definitely more than that, based on the statistical incidence of sensitives among the general population, but forty million was an easy short generalization. "The Gatekeeper doesn't have that much space."

"You don't want to be refugees," Kino said. "A barren planet, or a planet that doesn't want you. Those are your choices."

"Or we stay and are slaughtered," Jeepak said. He used 'we', but he had never been a true citizen of Olkye.

Yan looked between everyone at the table. "It's worth a try," she said. "If you have somewhere to go, it would be better to get your citizens out than have them..."

"We can hold out for a while," the Mother said.

"This is a losing war," Yan admitted. "That's all I can think about."

"If you're going to be fatalistic, that isn't going to help us," Jeepak said.

"Do you have a different plan?" Chanam asked, leaning forward onto his elbows.

"Oh, I have lots of ideas," Jeepak said lightly. "But my employers are the ones who call the shots."

"Are we ever going to meet these people?" Kino asked.

"Oh, no."

Yan hadn't expected any other answer, not really. "I don't know how you run an organization like this when no one has any idea what is happening, ever. When we arrived here, the other ships didn't even know that we were coming. We had to pass along your message ourselves."

Jeepak shrugged. "What is it that your book says? The left hand has no reason to understand the task of the right?"

Yan frowned at him. "So what is it that your superiors want from us?"

"It's not just protecting one planet that we want. It's to stop this whole disastrous chain of events from unfolding over and over. That's what we were trying to do with you," he nodded to Kino, "but I think we're going to have to change tactics."

Kino looked at him impassively. "To what?"

"The Empire isn't going to fall from three ships, not even if you threw them into the hearts of stars," Yan said. "The Emperor would never let that happen, not anywhere near Emerri, anyway."

"That's not what I'm saying," Jeepak said. "Just as I have connections all around the Dark Hands, and all throughout the many hidden planets, you have connections within the Empire. You know how it runs, intimately."

"We can't go back there," Yan said.

"We're not going to be able to bring the Empire down from the outside. We don't have the strength. What could topple it from the inside?"

"Anything short of destroying the entire Fleet, killing the Emperor, and removing every sensitive who knows the secrets wouldn't be enough," Yan said.

"I somehow doubt that. There has to be a way to destabilize it without that."

"They won't ever stop," Yan said. "I know the Emperor."

"So the Emperor needs to die," Jeepak said. "If that top collapses, then what happens?"

"I don't know," Yan said.

"So," Jeepak said. "This is what my employers want to figure out."

"What?" Kino asked.

"You're of little military use to us," Jeepak said. "And further than that, we can't trust you as much as you would like. What we want from you is for you to determine what it will take to collapse the Empire from the inside. That's the only way that we can ever have peace."

"Isn't that what people said when destroying the Edden Empire?" Kino asked.

"Mistakes were made then. I was not the one who made them," Jeepak said. "We don't have the resources to do what was done back then."

"Why not?" Yan asked. "You have plenty of sensitives." She was thinking about all the ones who were wrapped up in beings like the Mother, on all the hidden planets.

"I would not leave my home to wage war," the Mother said. "I do not know, but I doubt all the others in my position would, either."

Jeepak jerked his head towards the Mother. "Which is precisely why we're in this spot. They won't budge, because they all think that they won't ever be found. But that's what everyone has thought. Either that, or they thought they could defend themselves. And every single one of them has been wrong. And it's cost lives. Billions of people."

"Couldn't you just explain this to them?" Kino asked.

Jeepak laughed. It was an incredibly bitter sound. "You're so naive it's almost funny."

Kino frowned.

"So, what," Yan said, "you're asking us to make a plan for what to do to bring down the Empire? Wouldn't this involve trusting us more?"

Jeepak shrugged. "You'll be physically far enough away that you can't hurt us. You still don't know what our strength is or what our plans are. You're the best choice of people to go make allies within the Empire. If you get caught, it's no skin off our back."

"But if we do come back with information and a plan, you'll have to listen to us."

Jeepak's lips twisted a little. "That will be a jump to make when we come to it. And that's why we're sending him with you." He looked at Chanam. "He'll make sure that you're telling the truth, won't you?"

"Sure," Chanam said.

"Why isn't he going back with you?"

"Certain people have requested that children not be made to fight anymore," Jeepak said.

"Who?" Chanam asked. "And I'm not a child."

"I'm not authorized to give you that information," Jeepak said.

"Oh, fuck you," Chanam said. "You're getting rid of me because you think I'm useless."

"On the contrary," Jeepak said. "I would like you to stay. Can always use some more sensitives. But as we just discussed, this planet is going to have a difficult time holding out."

"I'm not afraid."

"No one said you were," Yan said, trying to get the conversation back on track. "You'll be useful with us, even if you are also meant to report on our dealings."

"Yeah, yeah," Chanam said. "You know I had a life on the Hound, right?"

"Well, you'll have a life on the First Star," Jeepak said, crossing his arms. "Take it or leave it."

"And where would I go if I left it?"

"I'll take you back on the Redheart, and dump you on some planet," he said vaguely. "Don't think I won't."

Chanam's cheek twitched as he clenched his jaw, but he didn't say anything else.

"Now. We're not sending you out totally without any support," Jeepak said, turning to Yan.

"Only mostly," Kino said. "That's your normal mode of operating, right?"

Jeepak smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "In the shuttle that I came here on, we have an ansible. We'll be leaving it with you. You should set it up on an uninhabited planet that you believe you can access reliably. With it, you can contact us."

"Who will be on the other end of it?"

"Unless we're in port above our end, the messages will simply be left for me to handle when I return," Jeepak said.

"Great." Yan's voice was bitter.

"You may not like working with me, but I'm the only person who's willing to give you a real chance of doing anything," he said with a shrug. "Like I said, take it or leave it."

"I'm taking it," Yan said. "But I would like to have other options."

"You're going to have far more autonomy than you really should," Jeepak said. "All you need to do is report back to us regularly, and prepare a plan that you think will work."

"You're trusting us an awful lot not to do something stupid."

"The only people you'd be hurting are yourselves."

Yan didn't think that this was quite true. Although Chanam had been sent to keep them on track, and Yan wasn't planning to disobey, she wouldn't have trusted someone to go off on their own, not if she had been in the Green King's shoes. A rogue agent could be a problem for everybody.

"So just to clarify," Kino said, "the only thing you want us to do is gather information and make contacts? Come up with a plan?"

"We want a way to split apart the Empire. You need to figure out people inside the Empire who would be in prime position for that. Either to kill them, or to bring them to our side. Don't put any plans you come up with into action until we've spoken about them."

"And how do you expect that we talk to people?" Yan asked. "We're enemies of the state."

"I suggest you start with the Trade Guild," he said with a shrug. "They're notoriously leaky."

Yan took offense to that, but it was true that the Guild often skirted the edge of legality. They were the one force not under the thumb of the Empire, and they were the one group of people who could travel and talk relatively unimpeded. It also helped that Yan, being a spacer, did have a few 'ins' with the Guild. She didn't want to get her family involved, but there were ways around that.

"Fine." The whole plan would require a lot of thought, but, overall, she was glad that this was what she was being ordered to do. She was glad that she wouldn't have to stay here and fight, kill more Fleet ships. Perhaps it was cowardly of her to want to escape that, but it was what she wanted anyway.

Yan looked at the Mother. "Was there anything you wanted from me?"

"Aside from advice about evacuation?" the Mother asked. "I wanted to see my daughter again."

That was twisting the knife. "Will you be alright?"

"No," the Mother said with a smile. "But I will do what I can."

"Maybe..." Yan said, then stopped.

"You will do what you can as well. I know you will," the Mother said. She reached her hand across the table and laid it over Yan's. "I am glad that we do not have to be enemies."

Yan nodded.

"You shouldn't come back here," Jeepak said. "Not unless we tell you to."

"Fine," Yan said. "Is that all you had? Vague instructions."

"Only the finest for our agents," Jeepak said. "Do you need anything more?"

Yan sighed, looked at Kino and Chanam. "No."

"Then we should be on our way." He started to stand up.

"Wait," Kino said. "What happens if someone comes after us?"

Yan looked at her. "You think the Empire is going to chase us down?" she asked.

"If we're talking to people, we'll be leaving a trail." Kino was right, but Yan didn't know what Jeepak would be able to do about it.

"You'll just have to deal with that when it happens. We're not giving you any information, so you won't be able to lead people back to us," Jeepak said with a shrug. "Try not to die."

"There's nowhere we can retreat to?" Kino asked. "None of you we can fall back on?"

Jeepak laughed. "You're on your own."