By the time Ali regained consciousness Barker had finished mounting the weapon and was taking it deeper into taurran space. Grey had called a senior staff meeting to discuss what they knew and their options, which had possibly been the most pointless exercise in the history of meetings. They went round in circles and the only thing that he was sure of by the end of it was that he respected Chopade's restraint in keeping the classified information he'd been granted access to quiet. Grey wasn't sure if he'd have been able to hold his tongue in the scientist's position.

Ali had insisted she was well enough to leave the medical bay and Narla couldn't force her to stay. Apart from slight dehydrated and blurry vision there was nothing else medically wrong with her. Therefore, Narla was forced to discharge her with strict instructions to return if she started to feel at all worse.

She was oddly quiet as she curled up into a ball in one of the conference chairs when Grey convened a debriefing. He sighed before tapping a few buttons to turn on the audio recording. "In your own time," he prompted as softly as he could in the circumstances. They were running short on time and he didn't want to make matters worse. He also couldn't humour her forever.

It was Ali's turn to sigh as she straightened slightly whilst still hugging her knees. "After I dropped Wood off I took the Hotpot back to Kentar. As predicted I ran into Bert's ships before I arrived and I set the Hotpot on an intercept course to take advantage of the auto-destruct that removing his device enabled. Figured I could take a few ships out, damage a few more," she explained. "I was beamed out of my pod and taken back to Kentar in a cell," she paused, "once there I was delivered to Bert, under guard, and he explained that he had been learning some kentarian history during his stay in prison. Somehow he found out there was a weapon buried under Vekanta's monument, an incredibly powerful weapon that he claims could destroy a planet."

"Based on the scans we've taken, Spud agrees," Grey added.

"That doesn't make me feel any better," Ali replied with another sigh. "He's working with a taurran princess named Klandra, though I suspect that once it's advantageous one will kill the other. I'm not sure which," she added. "There was just one thing: neither of them could activate the weapon. Its inventor put in a… I guess it's a fail safe. The weapon can only be activated by the blood of a hybrid between two species. The perceived threat of dilution of species," she finished sarcastically.

"That's why they cut your hand," Grey stated as the realisation washed over him. No wonder she looked like hell. He remembered how guilty she'd felt during the first time they chased Barker down. He remembered the way she'd finally broken after they'd imprisoned Barker because she blamed herself for not stopping him before it even started. He could only imagine how she felt now that she'd - forced or not - activated a weapon for him that allowed him to destroy planets.

Ali nodded. "I fought, damn but I tried to get away. Two guards, Klandra and Bert… I was so close to escaping, until Bert used the tetnar to make me fall and one of the guards shot my leg. Just to make sure."

"Why didn't they kill you once they had what they wanted?"

"Bert said it was because he wanted to experiment with just what he could use our tetnar for," Ali explained tiredly.

"You don't believe him?"

"He didn't appear to be lying, but it seems an odd reason to keep me alive. Unless he's hoping he can use the tetnar to subdue me, but if I were him I wouldn't take that chance."

"Do you know where they plan on using it?"

"No."

"Anything about his plans?"

"No," Ali replied. "Given that all we found out about his reasoning for Tuthu was 'why not?' do you really think he was going to share his master plan with me?"

"The tetnar works both ways, doesn't it?"

Ali flinched as if he'd struck her and dropped her gaze. "Yes," She admitted quietly, "but you can't -"

"Yes, I can," Grey reminded her sternly as she didn't dare meet his eye. "We're running out of time and options, I don't want to order you to try, but it might become an option we have to use."

"Next you'll be ordering me to seduce him, pretend I still love him, see if I can learn his secrets. Hell, why not order me to sleep with him?" Ali finally raised her eyes again and they were almost dancing with fire and unshed tears. "Do you actually realise what you'd be asking if you went down that road?"

A silence hung in the air between them for a moment. "Yes."

The way Ali had had shut down when she had started a suicidal run on Barker's ships was nothing compared to the change she went through as Grey levelled a steady gaze on her after admitting he would order her to put herself through an intimately traumatic experience, just to get information. For a moment her whole body almost trembled as she sought to contain whatever emotion was surging through her, her hands clenching into fists on her knees, before she relaxed again to level a perfected neutral expression at him. "Yes, sir," she replied coldly. "Are we done?"

Grey was taken aback. "Ali -"

"Don't insult me by justifying it," Ali snapped, quiet and seething. "Once shame on you, twice shame on me, right? You showed me where your priorities lie two years ago, I shouldn't have let myself forget that."

"Work with Chopade and Spud. I want you to work out a way of neutralising that weapon," Grey ordered. Ali nodded and stood up to leave as he angrily ended the recording. His jaw set as he glared at the seat she had just vacated. He had always taken the decision that would affect the least number of people, protect as many as he could because that was the best outcome. That was how he justified it to himself, but sometimes he wondered if he had reconciled what was best for himself as being the same thing as best for everyone.

"You said I'd get an honourable discharge! You promised me that if I pleaded it out they'd let it go quietly!"

He could still hear her quiet, angry and betrayed voice all these years later. She had given him the option to lie to her, pretend that he had been lied to. He had admitted that he did it to protect her, that the admiralty planned on making her heritage common knowledge. He knew what that would do to her. He knew what it would do to those around her and the wider ramifications within USEP. He knew she would tell them to bring it on and he believed that she would regret the decision later. So he hadn't let her make that decision.

That was why it still rankled two years later, why it made him angry to confront it, especially when she pointed out that she should have learnt from it, not him. After years of regret he should have learnt from it.

~-x-~

Ali had already made herself quite at home in the main data lab by the time Chopade and Spud joined her. The data labs were designed for the handling, processing and analysing of large quantities of data, from which they had access to all the same scanners and instruments as the science stations on the bridge. In these labs, however, they wouldn't be distracting the rest of the crew from their duties.

"You sure you're supposed to be up?" Spud joked as she saw her friend. Ali looked a little worse for wear with a dozen small cuts showing from the explosion they'd caused to break her out of jail, and large dark circles under her eyes, not to mention the bandage on her hand and the limp she was trying to hide.

"Been worse," Ali retorted and that served to reassure Spud slightly. "Did Grey tell you what we're doing here?" Both Spud and Chopade nodded.

From there they all brought up the data they had and started running scans that they thought would be useful, periods of silence broken up by brief discussions on half theories and intuition they hoped to turn into something concrete. "Well, causing an overload wouldn't be too difficult," Spud sounded defeated after an hour or so of no progress, "shame that would almost definitely end with the destruction of a solar system."

Ali chuckled. "I suppose if we're going to blow it up, we might as well make it memorable, right?" She joked, making Spud laugh before they both turned back to their respective screens to continue running through the data. After a few more moments Ali stopped again. "Okay, Mishri, what is it?"

"What?" He almost jumped as she addressed him directly so suddenly.

"You keep looking at me like you want to ask me something, so ask," Ali prompted, she could feel his gaze on the back of her neck when he thought she wasn't looking, never staring for long just frequently. Chopade glanced towards Spud who had stopped looking at her data out of curiosity. "Spud knows far too much about me already, she probably already knows."

Chopade opened his mouth before closing it again as he debated if he really should broach this in front of someone else. "I… I've seen your biometric," he admitted. Ali and Spud shared a look before Ali turned back to him as if to elaborate on what particular aspect he wanted to ask about. "Why is it classified?"

Ali chuckled. "Oh, that's just perfect," she decided drily with a dramatic wave of her arms as if to indicate she was washing her hands of the situation, "seal the records so you can deny they exist."

"Why?" Chopade asked.

"Because if you hide the problem, it doesn't exist." Ali's tone was dripping with sarcasm now. "And you didn't hear any of this," she added firmly.

"I… okay."

Ali sighed, realising she'd been a bit too harsh on him. "Sorry," she apologised, "but this is for your sake more than mine, you don't want to go down that rabbit hole, it's not worth it."

Chopade frowned as he thought. "How do you expect things to get better if you don't fight?"

Despite herself, Ali couldn't prevent one corner of her lips twitching into a wry half grin. "I don't. Guess part of me was just waiting for the scandal to break so I could sit back and watch the fireworks."

Chopade's face suddenly lit up like a light bulb. "Fireworks…" He murmured to himself. "Spud, what were you saying before about explosions?"

"That it'd be too big," Spud summarised.

"Can we control it? Chopade asked. "If we target key areas can we cause damage without causing a chain reaction or worse?"

Spud pulled a face as she scrolled through the data she had on the screen in front of her. "Wait, don't control it, contain it," Ali corrected. "What if we redirect the energy?"

"Yes, we could either detonate it where there were suitable and large enough bodies to absorb some of the energy, or we could reroute the output through the ship's gravitational processors."

"That sounds like a great way to cause an implosion," Spud warned. "I don't want you accidentally creating any black holes," she added as she started doing calculations.

"Then we don't channel all of the energy," Ali followed on as if it were obvious, "we channel enough to make the explosion safe."

Spud considered that. "In theory this is good, but we have no way of actually channelling or directing this energy. Looking at the scans, someone would need to be on board the ship, or we'd need remote access codes."

"Then we disable the shields and beam someone over and yank them back before they blow themselves up." Ali shrugged.

"Good luck getting Grey to agree to that," Spud retorted.

Ali was about to retort about being able to do as she liked before remembering that as far as Grey was concerned she was USEP again and he had made it clear that he expected her to give nothing less than one hundred percent of herself to this cause. She knew what he was going to ask her to do. "What about the remote access idea?" Chopade asked cautiously. Ali closed her eyes to count to ten as the discussion did open up that possibility again.

"Or we jam it," Spud suddenly sounded positively chirpy with realisation before whizzing through the data she had on her screen to find what she was looking for. "If we can jam it we render it useless until we can shut it down, get a better plan or simply dismantle it."

"Basically buying us enough time to treat it like a normal ship, so long as Wood is careful where he shoots," Ali summarised.

"Basically, yeah," Spud agreed as she continued scanning and muttering to herself as she did.

~-x-~

The control room was dimly lit as Bert Barker monitored the telemetry coming in from the weapon array. If he cared to think about it he would probably have come to the conclusion that living in a prison for three years had affected him more than he realised. He was still used to dim lights with focused lights available for reading by.

There was a brief flash of additional lighting as the door slid open long enough to permit someone access. Barker turned enough to see Klandra entering the room. "Where are we going?" She asked once she had joined him.

"Taurr," he replied as if it were obvious.

A silence hung in the air as if she expected him to expand on that but he felt no need to do so. "Why?" She finally asked.

Barker finally turned from the control panel he had been working at to the princess. "I thought you might like to see your home world one last time." Klandra hissed as she drew her weapon, but Barker was just as fast as he drew his pistol. They stared down the barrels of their weapons at each other. The taurran guards hesitated to draw their own weapons, in case doing so made Barker shoot.

"Why betray us now?" She asked, clearly seething judging from the hiss in her already raspy voice.

Barker almost laughed. "You really think I'm going to wait for you to double-cross me?" He challenged her. He already knew her well enough to know she was a good fighter and a good tactician, and respected her leadership. She would wait for her moment to seize the weapon for her people alone, after all her father had agreed to Barker's deal to protect his people. But Barker had been powerless before, and he wasn't going back.

"You better believe that my people won't forget this, and that we are dangerous enemies to have," Klandra warned. Her eyes darting around the room as she tried to get a read on the rest of the occupants. Barker knew she was smart enough to work out he wouldn't try something like this if he hadn't turned at least some of her guards.

"I don't doubt it," Barker agreed with a sly smile.

For a moment the only sound in the room was the sound of claws lightly scratching against weapons as the guards weighed up the pros and cons of opening fire. Barker and Klandra were still scrutinising the other down their guns.

Suddenly Klandra ducked and span to lash out at Barker's pistol with her tail. He fired at her but the shot went wide as the weapon was knocked out of his hand. She used her momentum to rush away towards the nearest cover. That first shot had had the effect of a starting pistol, and now everyone had opened fire upon each other as they dived into their own make-shift cover.

Barker had taken cover between the control consoles he had been working at, retrieving his pistol en route, and set a scanner down at his feet so that he could monitor the movement of the taurrans. He knew that some of them were on his side. Some were people he'd known from before he had been imprisoned. There were others that he and his allies had been slowly turning over to their side since; quiet words and persuasions about the dangers that meant their allegiance to one planet was immaterial.

Barker poked his head out long enough to take in the scene under the barrage of energy projectiles. He saw one of his taurran allies attempt to take out Klandra by bearing down on her in cover, but she simply drove her fist into his throat before burying her knife to the hilt in his thigh. With a quick, twisting jerk of her wrist she drew the knife back in a shower of blood and pushed him away with her other hand and retrieved his rifle with her tail. She whirled onto another taurran as he approached only for him to raise his hands in surrender to indicate his loyalty. Barker hoped that she would be so suspicious she'd shoot her own ally, but Klandra was a better judge of character than that.

Barker turned sharply at the sound of someone to his side and fired at the taurran trying to sneak up on him, causing the taurran to stumble. Barker kept firing, only slowing enough to prevent overheating, until his attacker fell to the floor, stunned. "He's hacked the comm!" Klandra shouted in indignation as she realised that she was locked out of her own systems.

"Princess, we need to retreat!"

Barker ducked back into cover as another barrage of projectiles rent some of the panels above them. After another moment there was a loud, frustrated hiss as Klandra realised that her guard was right. Barker watched on his scanner as Klandra and two of her guards retreated into one of the access walkways despite the fire from his allies. Once the hatch was sealed behind them the shooting stopped and they all cautiously stepped out from their cover. Barker indicated for a couple of the taurran soldiers to secure the room. "The important thing is to keep this room secure," he ordered. "They'll try and gather allies, so if we can spare the manpower we need to stop them getting access to the ship's systems."

The highest ranked taurran took charge and issued orders to the rest of his allies as Barker turned back to check on the weapon's status and controls. Thankfully there was no damage from the firefight. He rubbed at his nose as he carefully thought through his next moves - he hadn't wanted to initiate a rebellion this early - as he tried to ignore the dull ache in the back of his head.