Widhbo teleported to the alien vessel and landed on the hull. He intended to stay outside and check things over before making an entrance, but his presence was detected immediately and they pulled him inside with an energy attractor. He was disoriented and it took a few seconds for him to realize that he had been placed in an energy trap of some sort. The walls appeared perfectly smooth, without doors or windows.

"Is this your version of hospitality?" Widhbo asked aloud. His words echoed back to him. He tried telepathy. "Hello? Anyone there?"

"Identify yourself." Came back an answer.

"Thank the stars, you're civilized! Widhbo here. I intercepted your signal and am a member of the party you agreed to rescue from the Sora. I disabled the ship before we escaped. An evil madman was on board and I caution you not to reactivate the power core. Only two members of the crew managed to escape with me and everyone else on board perished. We only just managed to save the files of the others. So sad."

"It appears you don't need rescuing. Why are the others not with you?" came the alien's response.

"Oh, they're not like me. They are human, digitalized humans that is. Pitiful creatures. I was trying to help them as I do feel somewhat responsible for their predicament."

"And what sort of creature are you?"

"I'm a vielyr, an energy being from another dimension. I'm not supposed to be here actually. It's quite a long story."

Widhbo was ejected from the energy trap to an interior cabin of the vessel. There was a single large chair and he plopped down awkwardly upon it. He could not see any life forms, but felt their eyes upon him through remote viewers located about the room. He decided to try speaking aloud.

"Why did you place me in that trap?" His words carried, but he still felt his energy restrained to the room.

"We have an auto-defense system for space skulkers. This area is infested with the nasty things. If you hadn't spoken up when you did, we were about to feed you to the reactor."

"Lucky me. I've never heard of such creatures."

"They suck the energy from ships, like big leeches. They would have found you quite tasty if you stumbled upon a nest of them."

"What a perfectly horrid thought. This dimension may prove more interesting than I first suspected."

"Now tell us what brought you here to our dimension and what role you played before the loss of your ship."

"It wasn't my doing. Our leader was taken over by some sort of evil force the natives called a demon. Superstitious nonsense of course. He just went mad and devoured the others."

"You, being by far the most intelligent life form on board, should have taken responsibility. Why weren't you in charge?"

Widhbo straightened his feathers and paused to consider the question. "Oh, they're impossible. Like herding cats you know. Am I on trial?"

"You are. If you try to teleport out of this room, you'll get a nasty headache from the bounce back."

"May I have legal counsel with someone familiar with your system?"

"Not necessary. We will serve you in that capacity as well."

"You are both my prosecutor and defender?"

"We are quite capable of both."

"Judge and jury too?"

"We are sufficient."

For the next two and one-half sleep cycles Widhbo answered their questions and gave them the history of all his interactions with the inhabitants of this dimension. His captors were not entirely pleased.

"We will pass sentence later after further deliberation."

"Oh, have mercy! I'll do everything in my power to set things right. I stuck by them as well as I could. I was caught off guard. I was even stuck temporarily in the primitive form of a leopard, and in no position to stop this disaster. You can't imagine how awful it was to watch the crew and passengers being murdered, assimilated. I'm tortured by the memories still."

"I suppose we should wait and interview them as witnesses on your behalf," the voice said.

"Oh, no. That won't be helpful. I've told you everything," Widhbo said.

"Still, we could be swayed by their testimony to perhaps lighten your sentence. Are they not your friends as you led us to believe."

"Yes, of course, they're friends. Well, one is a friend and the other, to be honest, we never hit it off, is rather disturbed. She's not been right since she was murdered and then her ghost witnessed the horrid conditions on board. I doubt she'll ever recover. You'll understand when you meet her."

"She's a ghost? Didn't you restore her file?"

"She has her file, it didn't help. She's a strange one. An empath."

"How interesting,” The disembodied voice lost its monotone flatness momentarily. “Still we'll interview them per protocol."

"Might I request you unlock the madman's son, Tajlon, and speak with him. He knows me quite well and is by far the best of the lot."

"Locked up where?"

"Unfortunately, he’s still with the ship."

"You said everyone else was dead."

"I said everyone else on board. The prison is attached to the hull, not on the ship, but a separate unit. It even has it's own power supply. It shouldn’t be difficult to retrieve him without danger to yourselves."

"Why didn't you get him?"

"We were heading to into the great unknown. He was safe enough where he was, so why risk his life on a gamble? And we left in a bit of a hurry."

"We'll find him, if he's still there. You'll be reunited with your companions when we have finished interviewing everyone."

* * *

They felt a soft tug and Hal powered up their visuals. A small portion of a space cruiser could be seen through their porthole. The vessel was much larger than the Sora, the size of a large asteroid, with a sleek ovoid shape. Tentacles from the vessel grabbed their pod and pulled them into a small docking port on the side of the giant ship.

Etaine was nervous, her form pulsing between flesh color and transparency. When the hatch on their craft was forced open from the outside, she instinctively segmented and melted into the walls. Hal stood firm to face the intruder.

A holographic interface greeted them, human in appearance, but transparent in form.

"Welcome. I am here to assist you."

"That's great! I'm Hal, Halston Medantos that is, originally from the planet Beldora of the Hellsaxe star system. I trust Widhbo has filled you in on our circumstances."

"He has. In great detail. Where is the other party he spoke of?"

"Greyla, I mean Etaine is here,” Hal called over his shoulder, “You can reveal yourself. They're friendly."

The walls shimmered and Etaine coalesced back into the young woman's ghostly form. She had taken on a green hue which matched her eyes. Her hair was now jet black and had grown longer, down from her shoulders all the way to her waist. It floated eerily about in breezes of her own creation.

"It appears he was telling the truth," said the hologram, apparently informing his superiors. "Come aboard. This way."

"Tell us your name first. I won't follow a ghost man with no name, Sssir" Etaine said, ending her words in a long hiss, then flicked out her tongue, splitting the end as a snake's. She flared her hair out in all directions.

"Etaine, please," Hal pleaded. "Get yourself straight. We're guests here."

"I am only a temporary file and will dissipate after completing my function here. You may call me HT423047."

Etaine laughed at that and filled her hair with undulating snakes that danced between her locks. The hologram led them onto the ship and down a long hallway into a spacious suite which was well adapted for human use.

"Wait here. She'll need to be scrubbed," HT423047 said to Hal. "You're both in quarantine."

"Ssscrubbed?" Etaine flicked out her tongue and licked Hal's shoulder. "I don't need a bath."

"You're in need of repair," said HT423047.

"I have to agree with him," Hal said. "You need help, Etaine."

"I'm fine, sssimply fine." Her body changed into a serpent's form, covered with shining green scales. She slithered across to a sofa and curled up like a rope in the middle of it.

The door slid shut to the room. A force shield materialized between Hal and Etaine, forming a clear wall. Her half of the room filled with a dense white fog of nanobots until she was no longer visible.

Hal sat down in a chair and waited. Etaine was badly damaged from her experience and growing less stable with each passing hour. “I hope you have better results than I did,” Hal said to the walls.

Hours passed. Finally the fog cleared and Hal could make out the form of a woman on the sofa. It looked like Greyla. The wall separating them dissolved allowing him to rejoin her. He rushed to her side.

"Greyla? It's me. Hal."

Her eyes opened. They were brown again.

"Hal?"

"Yes. Everything's fine. You're well and whole again."

"Where are we?"

"We had to leave the Sora. We made it to the Dezba star system as planned and were rescued by a passing ship.”

"I can't remember anything past going dormant."

"You survived a hostile takeover on board the Sora. I found you in the files trying to make sense of things. We teamed up with Widhbo and managed to escape. You've had a rough time. Just get some rest, sweetheart."

"I'm not you're sweetheart anymore, Hal."

"That's my Greyla!" Hal knew Greyla had not forgiven him for refusing to fill her in on the details surrounding the death of her grandfather on Beldora.

He got up and moved back to his seat across the room, mumbling to himself. “I don’t know which is worse, trapped here with a crazy snake-woman or my ex-girlfriend.”