“We brought the bridge generator to the station,” the ship said. “We showed it to My Cousin Paolo, who became agitated, even terrified, and fled. Soon after that, all the Liars fled. Not much later, the station was destroyed. There is a plausible chain of cause and effect.”

“You think someone was trying to get us?” Callie said. “To destroy the bridge generator, and Meditreme Station was just collateral damage?”

“It’s a hypothesis worth exploring,” the ship said.

“An alien device like this, as powerful as it seems to be?” Ashok was still crying, but his voice was calm. “It’s going to attract attention.”

“I also find it interesting that the Anjou was destroyed,” the ship said. “I accessed the station database when I heard you tell Elena about the loss, and retrieved the data before the station… went offline. The passing security ship picked up the same odd radiation signature I’m seeing here, and noted the same uniform level of devastation in the debris. It’s reasonable to assume that whoever blew up Meditreme also destroyed the Anjou.”

“But why? The generator was already gone–”

“The navigational data wasn’t,” Drake said. “Anyone who looked at the Anjou’s computer would have a record of where it came from.”

“They aren’t just trying to destroy the bridge generator,” Callie said. “They’re trying to erase any evidence that the generator was ever in this system, and to make sure no one else can find the place where Elena picked it up. Gods.”

“This is my fault,” Elena murmured.

“No, we need to put aside that guilt and blame shit for now,” Callie snapped. “It’s not any of our faults. It’s the fault of whoever fired the weapon. But who could that be? Nobody knew we had the generator, except the Liars.”

“The Liars don’t blow things up, though,” the ship said. “There’s not a single record of the Liars ever engaging in violent action. We know they have weapons – some of those weapons are installed on this ship right now – but they’ve never turned their guns on humans, or one another, as far as we know. In the face of confrontation they always try diplomacy, in their own dishonest way, or bribery, or they simply run away. They’ve hurt people, certainly, but always by accident, to the best of our knowledge. Even when the Liars have clashed with pirates, they’ve always fought back with non-lethal means. That’s part of why humans feel safe letting the Liars onto their ships and stations and planets, even though they fundamentally can’t be trusted: the Liars have always been resolutely pacifistic.”