Callie grunted. The implications of that were interesting, but she decided not to dwell on them, especially since corrupted data was a more plausible explanation. Horses, not zebras – and certainly not centaurs. “OK, so we’ve got a magical mystery box. What do we do with it?”

Ashok stood up, pistons hissing and servos humming in his augmented legs. “I want to break it open.”

“But.”

“But it could be full of explosions, so I won’t. Also, I don’t know how. I tried to chisel out a bit of the casing for analysis and broke my diamond drill bit without even leaving a scratch.” He rubbed the back of his head, which was still mostly skin over bone. “OK. If our working theory is the Anjou encountered a group of Liars out in deep space, and the Liars augmented and altered the ship for whatever reason, including attaching this weird cube, then this is Liar tech. I’m friendly with one of the Liar engineers on the station, so I’ll ask him to take a look, and see if he recognizes it.”

“You think you’ll get a straight answer out of him?”

“Of course not. But I might get an answer that’s twisty in a useful way.”

“Fair enough. I’ll go with you. I’m a little curious to find out what’s in this box myself.”

“Spiders or gold, spiders or gold,” Ashok said.

“Oh, Ashok. It’s like you never even consider the possibility of golden spiders.”

Out on the hangar deck, a Liar technician slither-walked toward them, four tentacles undulating underneath as three more waved diagnostic devices in the air. “Greetings, White Raven. You wanted to see me?” His artificial voice was bombastically deep and booming. “His” wasn’t really accurate – Liars didn’t exactly fit into human gender categories, and when it came to biological sex, Liars either reproduced asexually or had multiple sexes or cloned themselves, depending on which group you were talking about; they seemed as variable in their reproductive strategies as they were in everything else. Some of them selected gendered pronouns when dealing with humans, though, and this one liked “he” to go with his performatively masculine voice.

“Hello, Cuz,” Ashok said. At Callie’s questioning look, he said, “His name is My Cousin Paolo, but I call him Cuz for short.”

“White Raven and I are old friends,” the Liar said. “I honor him by allowing this informality. The use of nicknames is a sign of deep affection and respect among my people.”