“Unleash the repair bots. Get them scuttling through all the places too small for us to go. I’ll check the rest of the ship. Go quietly tell Stephen and Elena what’s going on so they can join in too. Give Elena a non-lethal sidearm.”

“So, bug hunt?”

“Bug hunt.”

The White Raven wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small, either. It was made for a crew of five to live comfortably, and since Drake and Janice shared quarters (and everything else), it coped just fine with six. Callie checked the galley, their quarters, and the cargo hold. Stephen did a thorough search of the infirmary, and Elena checked everywhere else, stalking through the corridors. The ship did a full diagnostic, but didn’t report any findings. They didn’t dare use the comms to discuss their search, in case the Liar was tapped in, but they kept up a seemingly innocuous stream of chatter that managed to reveal their respective locations as they moved around.

In the end, it was the repair bots clambering through the walls of the ship that forced the Liar invader into the open. Elena was just coming out of the gym, near the bottom (or back) of the ship, when a vent covering came clattering off the wall and a dirty-white flurry of movement flew out of the opening, followed by a silvery, spidery repair bot in pursuit.

Elena shrieked as the child-sized, multi-armed Liar in an environment suit spun and lurched wildly in her direction, flailing for purchase in the lack of gravity. It grabbed onto a handrail and stared at her from a cluster of various-sized eyes behind its faceplate. Elena pointed her sidearm at the alien just as the repair bot seized it and pinned its limbs.

“I surrender without reservations.” The voice that emerged from the suit was feminine and full of resignation. “I wish to speak to your captain.”

“I’m sure she’d like to talk to you, too,” Elena said. “Shall? I found our stowaway. Get everyone down here.”

She looked at the alien for a long moment. She’d never seen one before, after all. The Liar had seven long appendages, arranged radially around its central trunk. It didn’t have a head as a domelike bulge on the top of its body. The Liar and its suit were essentially the same shape as the ship that had attacked them: a lumpy starfish with too many arms.

“Why did you do it?” Elena said. “Why did you kill all those people?”