The alien certainly didn’t appear very foreign.

He would have looked very, very Eleutherian, if it weren’t for the hair and whatever he was wearing. His skin and hair matched Athena’s and the Imperatrix’s, and his face just had that angular sharpness Carina had always associated with the upper class. Whoever he was, he was obviously important—the type of person who could pull strings.

Carina was definitely not the type of person who could pull strings.

She knew she looked nothing like a classy person. Classy people didn’t have short, fake-gray ombré hair. Classy people weren’t pasty white and freckly. Classy people weren’t petite and tiny, with shoulders that were too broad and legs too short for their body.

When Carina thought of classy, she thought, strangely, of Aleskynn.

Aleskynn was the epitome of a trendsetter. She had every desirable trait Eleutherian beauty standards—pale-but-not-pasty Snow White skin, hair the color of pale citrine, a pleasantly boyish frame and an impossibly skinny waist. She wasn’t even following fads—she was the one creating them. Classy people were the people who did what the Ciphers—or at least most of the Ciphers—did. Carina, with her fake hair and ill-fitting clothes, was pretty far from that.

Not that anyone else looked any bit like an actual Eleutherian dignitary, either. Athena was standing across the way from Carina and chewing gum she’d somehow found in the Revelation. It was partly insane and partly hilarious to watch her—all done up in white and gold, hair in perfect loops that concealed the cringeworthy red tips she’d put in it when she was 12, dressed exactly like any upper-class woman save for her torn sleeves—and chewing gum, of all things, and staring at the sky like she was bored out of her mind.

To be fair, it was absolutely breathtaking up here, and it must be even nicer for someone who had never been higher than their own caste before. Lyra looked completely enraptured, red-eyed and in awe, and Carina took a bit of comfort in knowing that there was no way she looked as inexperienced as that girl.

The man in black bowed to the Imperatrix and then to the Praetor, the only person not wearing white. Carina stood stock still, staring straight ahead with her best I-mean-business face and trying to pretend that she belonged here. Athena popped a bubble and Lyra jumped backwards slightly, but the man didn’t seem to notice or care. He straightened himself up and took Acidalia’s hand in his own before leaning down again and putting his mouth on it.

Athena could visibly barely contain her giggles. Carina almost smiled. Where was this guy from, the Platinum Age?

The Imperatrix herself looked mildly put off for a split second, then her face returned to haughty impassiveness. She put her hand behind her back in a move that was clearly not intended to be overt, then stared down at the man—she was about the same height as him in her over-the-top stilettos, but she was obviously looking down at him anyway. He appeared uncomfortable, and the air went silent and stagnant. Everything pulsed with a sort of potential energy—energy that had not yet been used up, but remained poised to fall, stuck like a ball dangling precociously at the very top of a hill. A quiet, awkward moment passed slowly by—an awkward moment that the Imperatrix didn’t seem particularly inclined to fix. Maybe she wanted the man to feel uncomfortable, to establish that she was the one calling the shots.

Finally, he said, in gravelly, mechanical voice, “Celestida tua, Imperatrix Acidalia Planitia e gens Cipher, pectus mihi confer mundum inducere me. Ego Legatum Ajax e Eleutheria et Cirya.” He did not sound particularly pleased.

He was from here? His name, Ajax, sounded very Eleutherian—a Greek warrior from the days of old, exactly the type of name a soldier boy would decide to call himself. But he had not just said Eleutheria—he had said he was an ambassador, a legatum, from Eleutheria and Cirya. Or maybe it was Sir-ya? Where was Cirya?

“Petimus auxilium tuum,” he continued. “Societas nostra sit cum minati. Nos ire ut cadas in interstellare bellum.”

We come seeking your aid. We are going to fall into interstellar war. He spoke with an accent, one that Carina didn’t recognize—like he was trying to imitate Acidalia’s Appalachian accent and doing a very bad job of it, but also something else, distinctly foreign. He inserted vowels where there weren’t supposed to be any, dropped consonants at the end of words, and rolled his r’s in a strange way. The effect of the odd speech alongside his general mannerisms made him seem very, very alien, despite the fact that he looked exactly like any other ordinary human male on Terra.

Acidalia paused, looked at him, and allowed him to continue, apparently completely expectant of the fact that whoever this man was was facing intergalactic war and seeking aid from a planet that was literally burning.

“We cannot provide you with sanctuary,” she began, her voice cold, “nor can we guarantee your safety while you remain on this planet.” Carina almost started—she hadn’t expected Acidalia to sound so callous towards a refugee seeking help. But was this man a refugee? He wore nice clothes and had decorated hair; he didn’t exactly look war-weary. Maybe he was playing up his misfortune for sympathy.

“We did not come for asylum,” Ajax replied.

“Then what is it that you seek?”

He sighed. “Come aboard.” His tone was bitter, annoyed.

If she was suspicious, Acidalia didn’t show it. Carina didn’t know if she was expected to follow her, but the others fell in line behind her, so she decided to join the mass of people rather than be the only person left outside.

The instant she walked through the—well, not door, more like hole—she was hit with an overwhelming warmth. It was hotter than most ships, and damp. Water vapor hung in the air—at least, she hoped the wetness was water vapor, because she suddenly had it all over her skin. Andromeda’s cybernetics beeped angrily, irritated from the humidity. The walls were iridescent and glittery, just like the outside; everything sparkled so much Carina's eyes burned and she had to close them. As far as actual equipment or machinery went, the walls were covered in instruments Carina had never seen before—mostly mechanical gages and plastic-covered wires, which were very ugly and unbefitting for a ship belonging to a dignitary.

“Allow me to present my colleagues,” Ajax said, standing in the middle of the dingy and very bright room. “Ambassador Cadé Maru of Northern Cirya-“

A shrouded figure dressed in a similar, but far more detailed and elaborate, black robe appeared out of nowhere.

“-and Ambassador Raeilya Cu’ur of Southern Cirya.”

Another figure, to the right this time.

“It’s Raeilya Æshiel,” the figure on the left corrected. It—she?—had a high-pitched, feminine soprano that still somehow sounded nothing like an ordinary human voice. She pronounced her own name differently than Ajax had, with vowels too foreign and too fast for Carina to copy.

“Fine,” Ajax said, rolling his eyes. “Raeilya Æshiel.” He didn’t pronounce it correctly the second time, either.

Carina momentarily felt a surge of anxiety for the man. What person spoke to politicians like that? Insulting a legate on Eleutheria could get a man killed faster than he could finish his sentence.

“Ambassadors.” Acidalia nodded slightly, but didn’t bow as Ajax had. Ajax looked slightly surprised when a few seconds passed and she remained standing, albeit in a different posture. Carina noticed suddenly what the Imperatrix was doing—she was mimicking the ambassadors’ body language, standing just as they were. When one of them shifted, she shifted subtly, too, copying each and every one of their movements.

“Imperatrix Ceasarina,” they both replied. The figure to the right—Cadé—had a much lower voice. If Carina were to guess, Cadé was male and Raeilya female, but she couldn’t tell exactly. Both were completely covered by black cloaks and veils.

“I apologize for my lack of manners,” Acidalia began, “but, as you likely already have observed, Eleutheria is currently in something of a state of disarray. For the sake of my empire, I would like to finish this conference as quickly as possible. Excuse my forwardness, but why have you landed on my planet, and what do you come seeking?” She sounded exactly like Alestra. Her tone matched that of the famous speeches of leaders in the past, the type the Scientia girls used to watch voxellated holo-records of back when they were in school.

“Come, sit,” Raeilya said in fluent, but heavily accented and hard to decipher, Eleutherian Latin. Carina knitted her eyebrows, surprised. Almost nobody could speak fluent Eleutherian Latin as a second language—the language was such an idiosyncratic mess that it was a nigh-impossible for anyone to learn unless they’d grown up hearing it. And yet, Raeilya had perfect grammar and syntax—her pronunciation was probably better than Carina’s.

She gestured to nothing, and then there was something in the nothing—chairs and a table, with surfaces that looked like they were made of opal. Acidalia took the end of the table and Cadé the head; Raeilya and Andromeda sat at their right hand sides. The others filed into chairs uncertainly. The table flickered in and out of existence like a broken light, and more somethings materialized before them. Black, shiny, small somethings.

Raeilya gestured to the spot on her hood where her ears were—well, would be, if she were human, which Carina wasn’t entirely sure of.

Andromeda didn’t hesitate to follow what she was told, and she popped the black thing into her ear. “What’s this thing?”

Raeilya said something unintelligible and fast, a word that sounded almost like a song. It was composed entirely of prettily garbled, inhuman notes that seemed to trip over one another, bleeding together into song-like nonsense. Carina was reminded suddenly of Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet—feminine, pretty, flowery, incomprehensible madness.

“Oh,” Andromeda said, like she understood completely. “Interesting.”

Either it’s a mind-control device or a translator, Carina thought. I guess I’m screwed anyway if it’s the former. I may as well. She squeezed it into her ear, and then she couldn’t feel it. Nothing changed, until-

“Are they broken?” Raeilya asked. Her voice was cool and feminine, but not mean. “I-“

“They work fine,” Carina interrupted, before realizing that she probably shouldn’t be interrupting some rich foreign stranger wearing a creepy black hood like a member of a cult.

“Good,” Raeilya replied. “I apologize, but my Latin isn’t-“

“No one cares,” Cadé snapped. Carina couldn’t see his eyes, but she was absolutely certain he was glaring at her. That’s rude, she thought.

“Please,” Acidalia said, “do not feel the need to apologize. My most pressing question right now is not concerning translations and linguistics, but intergalactic politics. There are more important things for us to be focusing on currently.”

“Of course.” Raeilya quieted and hung back, obviously waiting for her companion to say something. Suddenly, she seemed much more mouse-like, a shrinking violet.

Cadé didn’t make a sound, but he lifted his hand up to pull down the hood of his cloak. Ajax mumbled something about being melodramatic, but his words were lost in the vapor and mist as Cadé revealed his face in theatrical slow-motion.

His skin was a deep, glimmering blue, and his eyes were kaleidoscopic and watery. He—they?— looked somewhat androgynous, with very long and very intricate hair braided with seashells and crystals trailing down his back. There were slits underneath his big, bright eyes, which bulged with translucent, white liquid. It trickled down his face as if he were crying. He wasn’t ugly or terrifying, but very, very uncanny—there was something about him that just wasn’t right. His eyes were too large, his nose was too small, and he was so human, but so alien at the same time. He was like Acidalia, with her strangely exaggerated proportions and symmetry—almost ordinary, but not quite, and just far away enough for it to become unsettling.

Carina tried not to look at him.

“We have ended a period of unrest,” Cadé said, very slowly, almost as if he didn’t expect Acidalia to understand anything more complex. “We come to seek the aid of your military.”

“Then I apologize,” Acidalia said, “but I cannot help you. My army is in no position to assist you at this time, nor for the foreseeable future.”

“You will help us,” Cadé said, this time with more force. You’re playing with fire, Carina thought.

“And what are you offering me in return?” Acidalia asked cooly, fixing her steely gaze on Cadé’s face.

“Glory,” he replied, though this time around, he sounded more nervous. “Intergalactic fame. The spoils of the war when we win.”

“If you win,” Acidalia said defiantly. “In any case, I am unfamiliar with both this war and the unrest you speak of.”

“Of course you are,” Ajax muttered. “Earthlings-“

“-Terrans,” Andromeda corrected. “We’re not baby ducks.”

“Terrans,” he said, with thinly veiled disgust, “have no concept of anything beyond their own propaganda mill.”

“Seeing as you are clearly far more desperate for aid than I, you cannot afford to contest our achievements and philosophies,” Acidalia interjected. “Regardless of your personal stance on Eleutherian life, you appear to have more pressing issues. If our planet is as clueless as you seem to think, why are you reaching out to us for an alliance, especially after a centuries-long war of attrition and with the full knowledge that many of our resources are unavailable at the moment?”

“Because you’re in intergalactic anomaly,” Ajax said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a civilization that’s achieved so much while being a dystopian hellscape so volatile the Corps quarantined it for half a millennium.”

“Ajax.” Raeilya said the man’s name warningly. “Your personal issues with Eleutheria are not relevant to the current conversation.”

“Don’t talk to me, cennilia,” Ajax said, shooting her a nasty glare. For some odd reason, the translator didn’t work on his last word. Perhaps it was because he didn’t intend for the Terrans to know its meaning.

Acidalia shot Raeilya an expression that said, thank you. Carina knew that Ajax had seen it and was offended by it, because he sulkily leant back in his chair like a schoolboy who’d been told off by the teacher.

“I would very much like to know why we are ‘quarantined,’” Acidalia said, turning back to Cadé. “Both for the safety of yourself and your men, and for the safety of my citizens.”

Carina tried to remember what it meant to be quarantined. She couldn’t think of a definition outside of that of biology: to be quarantined was to be kept away from the general population while ill, to avoid infecting them. Were they sick? Stars, she hadn’t even thought about the Mira from an epidemiological standpoint. What diseases were they giving her, and what was she giving them? She was no biologist, but if viruses could kill billions of humans and leave other primates unharmed, as they had done during the Pandemic two thousand years ago, surely there were some “harmless” illnesses that could wreak havoc in alien environments. Suddenly, her skin felt like it was crawling with bacteria—which it, like all human skin, was.

“It is not a disease in the traditional sense,” Cadé said, deliberately and slowly. “Rather, we speak of an ideology. The militarism, nationalism, and barbarism displayed on this planet is unique indeed.”

“May I remind you that you that it was your war of attrition that directly led to the majority of Eleutherian militarism?” Acidalia inquired with a delicate tone that did not at all match her accusation. “There were, of course, other factors, but no sane being could deny that this war has had a massive role in the development of many of the ideologies you detest.”

“May I remind you,” he asked, “that it was the murder of my ancestors that began this conflict?”

“And your constant refusal to demilitarize that kept the fire of war burning for centuries after both the killer and her opposers had died. Nevertheless, the point of this discussion is not to accuse; it is to address the issue that your people suffer from—that is, conflict and unrest on a much larger scale than two planets, which has apparently grown so urgent that you feel the need to contact your greatest enemy for military aid.”

“Which brings me back to the military of Eleutheria,” Cadé said. “Do you honestly think that a world torn apart by war would be quarantined solely on the basis of being too violent?”

Yes, Carina thought. Eleutheria was violent. Alestra had killed thousands upon thousands of her own people—she didn’t blame these aliens for not wanting to touch that with a ten-lightyear pole.

“There are hundreds of planets out there far worse in their customs,” Cadé continued, having apparently forgotten the fact that he accused Eleutheria of being a monument to barbarism moments earlier. “Nations where prion disease is inevitable due to cannibalism,” he added. “Planets where children are tortured and murdered in ritual combat. One of the planets in the Lightyear Corps is a hivemind where innocents are regularly sacrificed for the purpose of what they call ‘maintaining homeostasis-‘ any horrifying concept that could flick through the mind of a sentient being probably has a civilization that either turns a blind eye to or openly encourages it.”

Hundreds? Were there hundreds of thousands of other societies out there, some as dangerous as Cadé described? It would explain the strange disappearances of starships in deep space, the radiation blips that Scientias were always told just to ignore, the idiosyncrasies of the universe that could be attributed to other peoples out there in the stars.

“The differences between those places and your planet, however, amount to one thing.” Cade’s voice took on a bizarre tone that sounded like a cross between a mystic and a news announcer. “Power. Eleutheria has the strangest balance between volatility and sheer scientific advancement that the Lightyear Corps has ever witnessed.”

“The Lightyear Corps is an intergalactic federation,” Acidalia said. It wasn’t a question, though Carina suspected that the Imperatrix, like herself, had never heard the name before this conversation. It was remarkable, how Acidalia could make it look like she knew everything when she was just as much of a newcomer as the people she governed. So remarkable, in fact, that it made Carina start questioning if she actually had her life together, or if she was just as much of a mess as everyone else somewhere beyond closed doors.

“How do you know of the Corps?” Raeilya asked, surprised.

“As your colleague stated,” she replied, “we are extremely scientifically advanced.”

That was nonsense, and Carina knew it. But the way the Imperatrix said it, like she knew it all along, made it seem like it was true—Eleutheria was always aware of the greater galaxy, and had chosen not to partake in it. Eleutheria was isolationist, not ignorant. Eleutheria was someone to be reckoned with, not a backwater, barbaric society. Acidalia had such conviction in her voice that Carina could almost believe that her homeworld was infinitely more powerful than it actually was.

Clearly, Cadé believed it, because he started slightly. “How?”

The Imperatrix smiled a false smile. “I don’t believe you’ve hidden your radiation, your debris, or your problems as well as you thought you did. You still have not answered my question, however: why now do you seek aid, asylum, or sanctuary from a people you have continuously fought for centuries? You are desperate for our assistance.”

Again, not a question, Carina noticed. She wasn’t asking Cadé if he needed her. She was telling him.

He sighed. “This conflict has escalated to an absurd degree unprecedentedly.”

“You need to go into more detail,” Acidalia replied. “I cannot help you if you refuse to provide me with any details beyond that there is indeed a conflict.”

“The Lightyear Corps isn’t perfect,” he said dejectedly. “We know there’s been tension building for centuries, but it’s finally coming to a head. Numerous societies have been vying for new planets to colonize; this sector of the galaxy is running out of resources, and fast, for particular species. They’ve been lobbying in the Corps for new places to settle. My planet is among those listed for colonization.”

“Why?” Acidalia asked.

“They need land. The Corps asserts that we can provide them with land, because nearly all of our settlements are underwater, but they don’t understand. We rely on the land just as much as we rely on the ocean. The near-universal settlement of every place above the sea level would kill our manufacturing and tourism industry, destroy our ability to feed ourselves, and wreck the ecosystem beyond what we can afford.”

“I can indeed see why that would be an issue,” Acidalia replied, mimicking his stance subtly. Her hair, wet with moisture from the water vapor, began to drip onto the floor as she pulled it across her shoulder. “And why exactly has the Corps agreed to terms that would doubtlessly cripple the lives of many of their members?”

“Because they’re cheating,” Cadé exclaimed. “Because the people who want to invade every planet they possibly can have formed their own little syndicate, and they’ve put their people into power, and they’re infinitely more influential than the people they’re talking about conquering. Cirya—my homeworld—has one representative. Their alliance has over fifty representatives from fifty different planets, and the number keeps growing and growing and growing. They’re united while the rest of the galaxy is divided, and their people get all the votes while the rest of us barely have a voice.”

Acidalia made a noncommittal hum, like she’d heard it all before.

“That’s not all of it, though,” Cadé continued, sounding borderline panicky, even through the translator. “Everyone in the galaxy wants each other dead. People are making alliances with one another that will drag the whole Via Lactea into war because of one society’s mishap. Navigating the Corps has become impossible, but we all know it’s only a matter of time until people start killing each other anyway. We desperately need your help, and we need it before the inevitable begins.”

“I take it the Corps does not know that you are here,” Acidalia said slowly.

“The Corps has no idea,” Cadé replied, an edge to his voice. “But the Ciryans, the Mira—we’ve been monitoring you for decades. We know that you have some of the best bio tech this side of the Milky Way, and we need it. Besides, what do you think these people were going to try and do to Eleutheria? You have two planets and several moons with atmospheres that are not deadly to many of the species of the Alliance. They will destroy you if you ignore this war.”

“And how exactly would they do that?” Andromeda cried out. “You just said we have a decent army-“

“The army of one world has no hope against an army of fifty planets,” Cadé said. “You are either with us, or with their Alliance. You asked before what’s in it for you—your reward is not being captured and tortured to death as they let loose electromagnetic pulses and prion plagues and nuclear bombs and gamma ray pulses. They will harness the power of black holes and tear this entire solar system to shreds, and you will watch every minute of it.”

“Oh,” Andromeda replied, blinking. “Weaponized black holes….” Somehow, the way she said it made her sound excited rather than concerned, and Carina had a sneaking suspicion that she was already thinking of ways to counter such powerful weaponry or remake it for her own army.

“So are you with us?” Cadé asked, considerably more hysterical-sounding than he had been at the beginning of this meeting. “Or are you against us?”

Acidalia stood silently. “Allow me to converse with my delegates.”