But a senatorial seal was an agent of some intelligence. It would know that it had reached the Lynx successfully, and that Zai wasn’t dead yet. It would report back to Nara that he had rejected it, just as any intelligent missive would. The seal would record his last betrayal.

He had to read it. Anything less would be cruel.

Laurent Zai sighed. A life spent in service of tradition, but he was apparently not destined to die cleanly.

He opened his palm before him as if to receive a gift, that first interface gesture taught to children.

The senatorial seal expanded before him, cut with the crimson bar sinister of Vasthold. Nara Oxham’s formal titles were vaguely visible in tertiary sight.

“Captain Laurent Zai,” he said to it.

The seal didn’t break. Its security AI wasn’t satisfied yet. Thin lasers from the Lynx proper washed Zai’s hands, covering them with a shimmering red patina. He turned them over, letting the lasers read the whorls of his fingertips and palms. Then they moved up and played across his eyes.

Still the seal remained.

“Godspite!” he swore. Senatorial security was far more cautious than the military’s.

He pressed his right wrist against the signet on his left shoulder. The smart metal of the signet vibrated softly, tasting his skin and sweat. There was a pause as DNA was sequenced, pheromones sniffed, blood latticed.

Finally the seal broke.

The message spilled out, in senatorial white against the depthless black of space. It hovered there, text only, absolutely still and silent, as clear as something real and solid. Just one word.

The message said:

Don’t.

Zai blinked, then shook his head.

He had the feeling that this would not be easy. That nothing would ever be easy again.

Executive Officer

Katherie Hobbes felt small in the shipmaster’s chair.

She had called the command officers to the bridge, wanting her senior staff at their stations when the battle-stations clarion sounded. None of them questioned her. As they arrived, they noted her position at the con, met her eyes briefly, and silently took their positions.

Hobbes wondered how many of the senior staff would accept her as acting captain. She had never fit in with the other officers on board Zai’s ship. Her Utopian upbringing was inescapably obvious; the cosmetic surgery that was common on her home planet made her beauty too obvious here on the very gray Lynx.

The staff looked duly serious, at least. Hobbes had set the temperature of the bridge to ten degrees centigrade, a sign that every member of Zai’s crew knew well. Their breaths were phantoms barely visible in the dim, action-ready lighting. She knew there would be no mistakes during the drill, or during the body recovery. However the politicals had screwed up the rescue, this crew felt they had failed their captain once. They were all determined not to let that happen again, Hobbes was confident.