According to Jilan, FLEETCOM had made it crystal clear there could be no more National Holidays. ONI went on high alert, and as soon as Section Three got word of a freighter missing in Epsilon Indi, they'd authorized her to conduct a covert investigation. Just in case she needed to take exceptional action, al-Cygni's superiors had ordered her to recruit Avery and Byrne.

"Ma'am, we've got hostiles in the hold," Avery whispered into his helmet mic.

"Take them out." Al-Cygni's reply was curt. Avery was supposed to maintain radio silence.

"They aren't Innies."

"Clarify."

Avery took a deep breath. "They're aliens." He watched as the first three creatures that had come barreling through the barrier struggled to get hand- and footholds—studied their long, bony beaks and large, bloodshot eyes through their clear helmets. "Kind of like lizards without the tails."

There was a pause as Jilan, holding station in Walk of Shame some two hundred kilometers distant from the freighter, considered Avery's words. But the Staff Sergeant knew it wouldn't be long before one of the aliens looked up and saw them lurking in the shadows between the beams.

"Ma'am, I need orders," Avery persisted.

"Try and take one alive," al-Cygni replied. "But don't let any escape, over."

"Roger that." Avery hugged his battle rifle close. He hadn't had time to fire the weapon. He hoped its nine-point-five-millimeter high-penetration rounds would be sufficient to puncture the aliens' iridescent suits.

"Byrne, get set." Avery glanced at the other Staff Sergeant, positioned between a pair of beams to his left. "I'm firing on the leader." He assumed the leader was the alien nearest the shimmering hole in the hull. It seemed more composed than the others, and also carried an obvious weapon: a silver, C-shaped pistol with green energy glowing between its tips. Avery hoped taking down the leader would make the other aliens—now splayed firmly on the floor— more eager to surrender. He took a breath and fired.

In zero gravity, the recoil from the battle rifle's three-round burst was more pronounced than Avery had anticipated. Two of his shots went wide, and, as the recoil slammed him back against the hull, he watched his wounded target disappear back through the glowing barrier.

Avery cursed himself for not bracing more firmly against the beams. But this was his first experience with zero-gee combat. He could only hope the aliens were similarly inexperienced.

So far, this didn't look to be the case.

Avery did his best to steady his aim as the three remaining aliens pushed off from the floor and rocketed toward him in a loose triangular formation. The one in the lead had a bigger helmet, and Avery could see through his scope that it also had the longest spines—fleshy red spikes compressed against its head. But Byrne had acquired the same target. He fired first, and sent the alien spinning to Avery's right.

Avery didn't have time to adjust his aim before one of the trailing aliens slammed into him, slashing with some sort of crystal knife. He parried the knife with the barrel of his rifle as their helmets cracked together. Avery's helmet began to shake, and for a moment he thought the visor was about to shatter. Then he looked the alien square in the face and realized the vibrations were simply the transference of the creature's silent, livid scream.

Avery had pinned the creature's knife against one of the beams. The weapon was energized —gleamed with internal pink fire. He was certain it would make short work of his vacuum-suit, not to mention the flesh beneath.

With its free hand, the alien began clawing at Avery's neck and shoulders. But its gloves were bulky and it couldn't do any real damage. Avery reached down and unholstered an M6 pistol he'd selected from al-Cygni's arsenal. Before the alien could react, he put four quick rounds into the underside of its elongated helmet, near the base of its bony jaws. The alien's head burst apart, painting the inside of its helmet a very vivid violet.

Avery pushed the alien back down toward the floor of the container as Byrne opened fire to his left. But Byrne was also having difficulty recovering from his first shot, and the third alien hit him right in the gut, knocking his battle rifle loose. As the weapon rebounded off the hull and went spinning out of reach, the alien drove its knife into Byrne's left thigh.

The alien must have thought it only needed to puncture Byrne's suit in order to kill him, and it might have succeeded were it not for the suit's compartmentalized design. As Byrne pulled the knife from his leg, the hole filled with yellow sealant foam. The alien flailed its arms— Avery thought to try and drive the knife back in. But as the weapon began to pulse with rosy light, he realized the creature was actually trying to escape an impending detonation.

"Lose the blade!" Avery shouted. "It's gonna blow!"

Byrne sunk the knife into the alien's mid-section and kicked it back the way it had come.

The creature pulled frantically at the blade, but Byrne had driven it too deep. A split-second later it blew apart in a bright pink flash. Tiny, wet shards flecked Avery's visor like slushy snow.

"Thanks," Byrne grunted over the COM. "But I'd put a few more in that one if I were you."

Avery looked to his right. The first alien Byrne had shot had managed to wrap an arm around a cross-brace farther down the ceiling and stop its lateral motion. The thing had its head cocked in Avery's direction, and was staring at him with one unblinking eye. Byrne's burst had caught its free arm below the shoulder, but the alien had managed to keep hold of its knife and was preparing to make a throw.

Avery put the creature's torso square in his pistol's V-shaped iron sights. He could see its fleshy spines engorge with dark blood. The alien opened its jaws, baring razor-sharp teeth.

"Nice to meet you too," Avery frowned. Then he emptied the M6's twelve-round clip into the center of alien's chest. The impacts unhooked its arm and sent it tumbling toward the far end of the cargo-container.

"I'm going after the other one." Avery planted his boots firmly against the hull.

"I'll back you up," Byrne volunteered.

Avery shot Byrne a serious stare. "If that blade sliced an artery, the foam isn't gonna hold.

Stay put. I'll be right back." With that, he pushed off toward the barrier.

"Johnson," Jilan said. "You've got ten minutes."

Avery completed her sentence: before I shoot the alien ship with you in it. He knew Walk of Shame was equipped with a single Archer missile—a ship-to-ship weapon capable of crippling all but the largest vessels in the human fleet. The Lt. Commander had told him she would use it to shoot what they had all thought would be an Insurrectionist ship if it tried to escape. Avery knew it would be even more important to stop the alien ship. For if it got away, it would almost certainly return with reinforcements.

"If I'm not back in five," Avery replied, "I'm not coming back." Then he passed through the barrier.

Avery wasn't expecting gravity, but he managed to perform an ugly duck-and-roll and rise up with his rifle at the ready. Aiming straight down the semitransparent tube, he could see the full hooked profile of the alien ship. Avery tried not to think about how many more of the aliens might be on board. There was no cover inside the umbilical, and if the creatures poured into the tube, he would be a goner. Avery fast-walked forward and a few moments later, he was posting beside another fluctuating field.

As far as Avery could tell, the first barrier hadn't done him any harm, though he couldn't say the same for his COM. He tried to contact Byrne and al-Cygni, but their secure channel was all static. All alone against an alien ship, Avery thought, taking a few calming breaths. He knew if he thought about the situation any longer he would lose his initiative and quite possibly his nerve. Weapon shouldered, he stepped through the second barrier. This time he noticed his skin tingle—felt the field compressing the flexible fabric of his suit.

A short passage beyond led to a wider corridor bathed in purple light. Avery scanned left and counted twenty meters to a bulkhead. He noted recessed doors spaced every five meters along the way—sealed compartments, but for what Avery could only guess. He scanned right and saw what appeared to be a giant worm tied to a bunch of dirty pink balloons turn a corner at the end of the corridor. A different kind of alien? Avery wondered.

Suddenly he saw movement to his left. As he leapt across the corridor into one of the recessed doorways, plasma scorched the air behind him. Turning around, he watched a salvo of searing green bolts rake across the corridor. The metal boiled and buckled like the shells of beetles trapped on a burning log.

Avery wasn't about to stick his head out. Instead he angled his battle rifle around the corner of the alcove and fired until the sixty-round magazine was dry. The hostile fire had stopped.

Avery hoped he'd hit his target, not just driven it into cover.

Of course, there was only one way to find out. He pulled his rifle back and swapped magazines. Then he counted to three and pivoted into the corridor.

The first place Chur'R-Yar went was the bridge. From there she could disconnect the umbilical and power up her ship's engine—escape before any of her attackers came on board.

But as she pulled off her helmet and removed her awkward gloves, she realized all her plans were scuttled.

The air inside the bridge was ripe with the Huragok's gaseous emissions, and the circuits connecting the Luminary to Minor Transgression's signal circuits had been repaired. As she stalked toward the pyramidal device, she saw it was transferring a full report of all the alien world's relics back to the Ministry of Tranquility.

"Deacon," she hissed. "Traitor."

But oddly enough, at this moment of betrayal, the first thing Chur'R-Yar felt was sadness.

She had come so close to her prize that she could almost feel the soft walls of her nest—the warm clutch of eggs beneath her legs and the little Kig-Yar growing inside that would have carried on her bloodline. She enjoyed these imagined sensations until she was overwhelmed with a desire for revenge.

When the methane suite proved empty, Chur'R-Yar knew there was only one other place the Unggoy could be: Minor Transgression's escape-pod. But as she exited the suite and saw the black-suited alien emerge from the passage leading to the umbilical, the Shipmistress realized, to her extreme disappointment, that even vengeance might be beyond her grasp.

If the alien was aboard her ship, her crewmen were dead. With their help, she might have been able to fight past the alien to the pod in her ship's stern. Now her success depended on her own speed and cunning. But these were much reduced.

The calluses across her shoulders were now so stiff that she had a difficult time bringing her plasma-pistol to bear. By the time she had it up and firing the alien had dived for cover. As she considered how best to drive the alien back into the open, she saw fiery flashes. Projectiles tore through her abdomen and clipped her spine. Another shot shattered her left knee, but by then she no longer had any feeling below the waist. Blood leaking from holes her overtaxed suit could only partially fill, she slumped sideways against the corridor wall.

The Shipmistress' hands felt impossibly heavy, but she managed to raise her pistol into her lap and check its charge. Less than a third of its energy remained—not enough to stop the alien when it came out of hiding, but enough to do what needed to be done.

She reached up and palmed the switch to the methane suite's airlock. As its outer door slid open, she used what was left of her strength to aim her pistol and depress its trigger. As the weapon built up a powerful overcharged bolt sufficient to burn through the airlock's inner door, more projectiles tore through her chest, knocking her back onto the floor.

The light above the Shipmistress dimmed as the alien approached. But despite the spasms wracking her arm, she waited to release the trigger until the thing looked into her eyes. She watched it glance from her weapon to the airlock. She waited until it flinched—an indication it understood the fate she had chosen for it.

"This is my ship." Chur'R-Yar hissed. "And I shall do with it what I wish." Her claw slid off the trigger, and a bright green ball of plasma hit the inner door with a sizzling crack.

As the bolt penetrated the suite, it ignited the ambient methane, starting a chain reaction that quickly claimed the tank recharge-station imbedded in the suite's wall. The alien scrambled back toward the umbilical, but the station's compressor exploded into the corridor, knocking its helmeted head against the opposite side of the passage. The alien fell to the floor unconscious.

Chur'R-Yar's tongue flicked weakly against her teeth. A measure of vengeance, at least. As the last of her blood pumped out of her body, the methane suite's ruined airlock burst open and a roiling fireball consumed her.

Dadab felt the blast before he heard it—a sudden tremor inside the escape pod followed by a muffled boom. He whined with terror as a series of small explosions rocked the pod in its cradle. What was keeping the Huragok? The Deacon had been very clear that they had barely any time to execute their plan.

When all the Kig-Yar were in the umbilical, Dadab had trotted out of the methane-suite with a spare tank, while Lighter Than Some headed to the bridge with his true accounting of the Luminations and his explanation of Chur'R-Yar's heresy. But before Dadab could return for another tank, he heard the Shipmistress' warning to her crew over his signal unit, and had remained holed up in the pod.

Now he heard a whistle of air in the circular shaft connecting the pod to Minor Transgression's main corridor and knew the ship was venting atmosphere. He didn't want to leave the Huragok behind, but he would have to close the pod's hatch or risk explosive decompression.

The whistling came to an abrupt stop as Lighter Than Some dropped down the shaft and squeezed into the pod. < Is something wrong? > the Huragok asked, catching sight of the Deacon's panicked gaze.

< You, late! > Dadab signed, slamming his fist on the pod's command-console to close the hatch.

< Well, we couldn't have gone anywhere without these.

> Dadab groaned as Lighter Than Some revealed the cause of its delay—the luggage it had stopped to retrieve from the methane suite. In its tentacles it held all three of the intelligent boxes, two from the freighter's command cabins and one from the giant machine in the second freighter's hold.