"How are you feeling, Commander?"

Pirra smiled to Cenz as he moved the arms of his new suit.

"It fits well," he said, his screen offering a smile. It looked . . . forced.

"But with respects, sir, that's not how you feel," Pirra added.

He looked to her - at least the eyes on his screen did. "I did ask you to just call me Cenz, Pirra."

She could tell the being was joking with her, and she nodded. "We're on duty, but if you insist I drop rank - I will. At least for now."

The Coral accepted that and stood up slowly. "It is odd. When I took off the suit, I had forgotten just how confining it was. I daresay I . . . enjoyed being out of it. Until I was shot, at least."

Pirra remained silent as Cenz continued to flex in his suit, testing its limits. It was not a substantially different design, but she could not know just how it felt on him - he was, after all, a collection of many beings.

"I shall miss those thirteen that died," he said. His voice was softer, but his screen apparently did not know how to interpret his sadness, flickering from neutrality to a frown and back.

"I apologize, Cenz, that I let that happen. You could have gotten away, but you went back to help me."

"You did no less for me. I do not blame you, Pirra, and you should not blame yourself. I am just sad that . . ." His screen looked to her. "Each and every one that makes up me is unique. Like every member of this crew. In a sense, I am my own ship - and I suffered losses recently."

"Will their absence cause you any difficulties?" she asked.

"Like will it lower my intelligence? No. In fact, a great number of my polyps remained on the ship - some of us rotate out on a daily basis. Those that were not interested in seeing New Vitriol stayed behind." He flexed his hands - they moved as smoothly as those of a human.

"Friends said goodbye to friends in their own way. But they did not know it was a final farewell."

It was a feeling Pirra had known as well. In emergency response, sometimes people did not come home.

A heavy thunking from the hall outside the medbay of the Craton drew their attention. This medical bay was just outside the main hangar - convenient for loading accidents or boarding wounded.

"They're still taking the cloning tubes on?" Cenz asked.

"Nearly done. We've taken on every one that is in a condition to be moved," Pirra explained.

Cenz nodded. "When they searched the room, did they find your singing stone?"

Pirra was surprised he remembered. His declarations near the end, lamenting that she had thrown it, she had taken them to be something like the delirious ramblings of a dying man.

"Ah . . . I gave it a search, but I didn't find it," she admitted.

"Really?" Cenz shook his head. "Where could it have gone?"

"There were signs that the room was cleaned - the bodies of the dead guards were gone by the time we got to the room, and a lot of the data systems were destroyed. Presumably to keep us from learning anything important." She looked away, unsure what else to say.

"And evidently that meant destroying your singing stone . . . I am sorry, Pirra."

"It's not your fault and you shouldn't blame yourself," she replied.

"Ahhh," Cenz said, a soft smile on his screen. "I'm getting my own medicine. I regret saying it already."

A silence fell between them, and Cenz was watching her thoughtfully. "You seem as if something is weighing upon you, Pirra."

"I suppose I am, but it's small in comparison to your loss, Cenz."

"Perhaps. But that does not make it invalid. What is on your mind?"

"Humans are not very spiritual, are they?" she asked.

"No," Cenz agreed, looking surprised by the comment. "They do not tend to be nowadays. I understand religion still exists among some, but it accounts for only about 2% of the population of the Sol system and most major colonies. Sadly, the data is unknown for their minor colonies."

Pirra began to pace slowly. "They had their religious wars, persecutions - I've read about them, vaguely." She looked up to Cenz.

"From my understanding, it's a very common phase for many species," Cenz said. "But I am glad that mine did not have such things - we rarely had conflict. It did occur, of course, but we never had anything even approaching what might be called a war. At least . . ." he trailed off. "Until we became spacefaring."

Pirra nodded. That wasn't ancient history; the Sapient Union had been involved in a few wars, and being old members of it, Cenz's people had naturally been drawn in as well.

But those wars had not been by their instigation, and peace had come - and held. At least so far.

"Have your people ever had any religion?" she asked.

"Yes and no. We never had the concept of gods, or an afterlife. But we had concepts that might be considered spiritual." Cenz's voice had a softness to it.

Pirra wondered if she was prying; though friendly to a fault, Cenz was rarely open about his people, and much about them remained somewhat mysterious.

"For example, a very common thought is that there is a spiritual connection between all of our people, as like individual polyps in each group," the Coral continued. "Since we have met other species, some have even gone so far as to suggest that all life is connected, even if we do not realize it. From my kind to Humans to Dessei." His screen smiled, but it was sad. "Even as far as to Aeena and Latarren, who taught my people what war was."

Twenty of their colonies annihilated by the Aeena, she knew. Unarmed, harmless, in systems that most beings found little value in. The death toll had been total.

Against the Latarren there had been no similar mass loss of life for his people - except among those who had volunteered to serve and died in the line of duty. It had been another bloody war, even if not as destructive as it had been against the Aeena.

It put her own concerns into a new light, and she felt guilt. She had been regretting her loss, but it was only a stone. It represented more, but at the end of the day . . . it was just an object.

"Your loss is very real, Pirra," Cenz said.

She gasped and looked up. Had she said something out loud?

Cenz's face was smiling gently. "Apologies for startling you . . . humans may not read you very well, but I'm better at it than they. Were you feeling guilty?"

"I was," she admitted. "I didn't know I was so obvious." Maybe she exaggerated her mannerisms for Alexander's benefit and didn't realize it . . .

"You are Haupa?" he asked.

"Yes," she admitted. "I was born long after our way of life was gone. But I always felt a connection to it. Even after nine hundred years, they couldn't destroy everything about us."

Her hand closed into a fist. It had "only" been classic imperialism. Her people, conquered, their way of life exterminated, their language and culture driven to extinction. No one left even spoke their language, not natively. It had been dead for over 200 years.

Even most of the artifacts gone or destroyed. Everything had just moved on, but the stone had been passed down to her. And now she'd lost even that.

"Pirra, do you-" Cenz began, reaching for her.

She cut him off. "Were the people of this system truly oppressed in the Sol system?" she asked.

Cenz pulled his hand back, his face surprised. "Ah . . . Well, I am not an expert on their history, Pirra. But I have looked at their public history and compared it to those from Earth."

He shook his head. "Their grievances were not reasonable. They wanted the law to bend to the decrees of their prophet, and when that did not happen they considered it to be oppression. And their prophet is believed to have conceived of his plan to leave the Sol system due to crimes he had committed. By the time they caught up with him - he and his followers had gone."

Cenz shook his head. "Sometimes there is oppression, and sometimes beings believe they are being oppressed simply because they don't get their way."

Pirra closed her hands into fists. "When people don't know the real thing, they think an inconvenience is the worst."

"It's true. To be honest, I know many of my own kind who think a scratch on a Polyp is the end of the-"

The sound of panicked shouting came from outside the door. Both of them snapped their gaze up. Footsteps thundered by, as many people moved in a panic.

"Stay here," Pirra said. "I'll see what's up."

"Unfortunately I must. I'm not fully stable," Cenz replied.

Pirra rushed out into the hall. She saw crew members and civilians running, but when she caught sight of a security officer, she began to follow him.

"What's happening?" she asked quickly.

"Shots in the colony," the man replied. "Someone is reportedly hit - we're securing the boarding dock."

Nodding, Pirra ran on. Coming to the great airlock doors that opened into New Vitriol, she saw a crowd gathered. Many of the people out there were in SU uniforms, and she felt a queasy sensation in her stomach.

She sprinted as fast as she could in the artificial gravity of the Craton, then leaped into the zero-g of the colony. "I'm a Responder!" she shouted. "Let me through!"

*******

Blood spilled from the man's mouth. The area around his lips were already entirely red, and the man looked to Brooks with desperate eyes.

Pirra appeared, scanner in hand. She put her hands on the wound in the man's stomach, attempting to staunch the bleeding.

But Brooks didn't even need her to give him a shake of her head to know that there was no helping Nec Tede.

Brooks propped him up. He did not think Tede was a good or honest man, but nonetheless he did not deserve to die bloody like this.

The man's hand flailed upwards, searching for Brooks's. The Captain gave it to him, and the man hung to him desperately.

"Don't try to talk," Brooks said. "We have medical teams on their way."

The man shook his head, spitting more blood.

This amount - it had to be a splitter round. Smart bullets used only in the wild territories by megafauna hunters, that shattered in ways designed to cause the most damage to the most important organs.

"Rem," the man got out. It was barely audible over his choking.

He was fading rapidly. Even if they got the medical team here, there was no surviving this kind of wound without the most intensive of care literally on hand - and even then, it was unlikely.

The man's grip went slack, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

"We've caught the culprit sir," a security officer said, panting as he came up. "It was a drone - already blanked itself. We've got it for scanning all the same."

Brooks did not look up from Nec Tede until the life was fully gone from his eyes.

Lowering the man's body to the floor, he stood up. His uniform was covered in the man's blood.

"Keep searching in case there was a controller," Brooks said. "And set up anti-drone defenses, just in case someone else is targeted."

"Yes, sir. For that reason, Commander Yaepanaya is asking that you come back aboard the Craton."

Brooks nodded, and moved to follow the security officer.

Pirra saw that he was looking down at his hand. It was clenched around something.

"What is it, sir?" she asked, standing up. Blood had gotten on her wing drapes, but she could clean them later.

The Captain opened his hand, briefly. In it, he was holding a data capsule.

"The Governor's parting gift," he said.

*******

FINIS