Maiga and Wixa climbed out of the Friss, stepping onto the deck of the Trebuchet's shuttle bay. Two small shuttles stood far back in the bay, allowing room for the Friss, a rather larger ship than it would usually hold.

Manoeuvring in through the doors had been a tight squeeze and Maiga knew an operator would be standing by to use tractor beams and force fields to freeze the ship in place, if she strayed too close to the edges. But she'd glided in slow and smooth, thrusters pushing them gently, until they touched the deck, with barely a bump.

Bara herself strode across the floor to meet them, no lizard coat or uniform jacket on now.

"Very impressive manoeuvring," Bara said, "I doubt my own pilot could have done better." She shook their hands. "Welcome to the Trebuchet, my friends."

"Thank you for helping us," Maiga said, "and for offering your engineer's services for repairs. Two men she recognised from the bar approached, the dark skinned one and the long haired one.

"This is Alex, my first officer and chief engineer," Bara said, introducing the black man. "And his colleague, Sev."

Chief engineer and first officer in one surprised Maiga. Engineers rarely became first officers while still remaining engineers. People have died here, she thought. Senior officers. These people are too young to have commanded this ship back before the war.

"Why don't I give you a tour of the ship while they are working on the repairs?" Bara offered.

Maiga felt suddenly nervous of leaving the Friss unguarded. Bara seemed friendly, but still...

"Can I stay here?" Wixa said. She looked at the engineers. "I just love to watch men work." She grinned and the two men gave each other nervous glances. Bara raised her eyebrows, perhaps disapproving, but then nodded.

"Of course. Maiga, will you join me?"

Maiga saw Wixa's tiny nod, a small signal that told her to go ahead, she'd be fine here.

"Thank you. Yes."

~o~

The tour ended in the Captain's ready room off the bridge and Bara called the galley to bring them tea.

She loved showing the ship off, Maiga thought. The vessel had clearly suffered damage in combat and some areas were closed off. But the rest of it was as neat and clean as it must have been back in the old days. The crew wore their uniforms, they worked efficiently. The engine room had some odd looking components, rigged up to the ship's existing equipment, probably for the Chia Majan guns, but otherwise you might not notice anything amiss about the whole thing.

"It's an impressive ship," Maiga said, as a crewman served their tea and left. "How long have you commanded her?"

"A few months only." When Maiga raised a questioning eyebrow, Bara went on. "I was the first officer, but our captain was killed in the war."

"Other senior officers too? You mentioned your Marine commander was killed."

"Yes," Bara said. "Several officers died. It's been a difficult time. But we are fighting back." She laughed. "As you saw. And that job commanding my Marine unit is still available."

"Why do you need Marines?" Maiga said, ignoring the obvious hint. Marines had one purpose on a ship; to leave it and launch an attack.

"You don't strike me as a fool, Maiga," Bara said, her tone low, harsher than before. "Why do you think?"

"I think you're conducting your own private war out here." Foolish to challenge her, perhaps, but Maiga got the feeling she had some latitude.

"I make no apology for defending humans against their enemies."

"Defending? Or avenging?"

"Then I make no apology for avenging an unprovoked attack. An attempt at genocide that is continuing every day." Her voice rose. "You saw that. Those lizards tried to kill you! Two more dead humans to cross off the list."

"We may have provoked them."

Bara frowned, not sure for a moment if Maiga meant the Qacians that tried to destroy the Friss today, or the aliens in general.

"Captain," Maiga said, "I am grateful for your help, and I'm flattered by your job offer, but I can't join your crew. The war is over. We lost. Accept that."

"Never!" Not quite a shout, but she did push her chair back, and stand up. Maiga stayed in her seat, but tensed. Bara's face flushed, and a lock of hair came loose. She pushed it back behind her ear. "It is not over until we have back everything we lost."

"We lost our home. We can't get that back."

"I know that!" Bara gave her a glare, then started to pace. "Believe me, I know that! We will find a new home. We will take one if we must. We will take whatever we want."

Ah... Maiga's hand unconsciously strayed close to her sidearm. Wixa just may be right.

"People should have listened," Bara said. "They should have listened to the prophet."

Maiga looked up startled and fought to control her reaction. Bara didn't notice though, still pacing up and down, arms folded across her chest.

"We should fight for our own interests, our own glory."

Glory? Oh, she had it so exactly wrong.

"He never intended for us to be conquerors." The words left Maiga too quickly, making Bara look at her wide eyed, then lean across her desk.

"Did you hear him speak?" A look of awe came into her eyes. "I desperately wanted to. When I heard the prophecy, I wanted to find him and hear it from him. I wanted to obey his call, and head back to Earth at once, but the Captain... and then the recall order came and... did you hear him speak?"

Her face had become like a child's. How could she worship him like this and misunderstand him so completely?

"Yes, I heard him speak."

Bara sat down, with a sigh. "Oh, you are so lucky, you must treasure the memory."

Time to change the subject, Maiga decided.

"You talk of taking a new home, you're talking of conquest, but haven't you heard about the fleet, the one collecting up humans? From what I've heard they've found a planet --"

Bara looked disgusted. "Of course I've heard of them. The Committee." She gave a mocking laugh and then an exaggerated salute. "The High Committee!"

Maiga ignored the sarcasm. "Then why not join them? What you're doing now, attacking Big Four ships, you know as well as I do how that will end. Why not become part of something constructive? Go to the new home planet --"

"And do what?" Bara demanded. "I've heard all about this planet they've found. It's nothing but a mud ball. What are we supposed to do there?"

"We can start over. We can be the things humans used to be. Farmers --"

Bara snorted. "Peasants!"

"Builders," Maiga went on.

"Labourers!"

"Parents."

Bara stared at her, and then spoke more quietly.

"Cattle."

Silence conquered the room for a while, until Bara spoke again, sounding resigned.

"I'm a warrior, Maiga. We all are. Fighting is what humans are for."

"And who taught us that?"

"Who...?" Bara didn't seem to understand and Maiga couldn't blame her. It barely felt like something 'taught'. More like programmed.

"Wasn't it High Command who taught us that?"

These were Ilyan's ideas, Maiga knew, but only in part. She hadn't followed him blindly, she had her own views. Like him, she'd read old books, about the strange world of the past, where people had families. Loving Ilyan, and thinking for the first time about having a child, had made her see there were other ways for people to live.

"Yes... I suppose they did," Bara said.

"And High Command betrayed us all."

"Yes, they... But..." Then Bara shook her head and her voice took on its captain's snap again. "No. They were fools about the prophecy of course, but that doesn't mean they were wrong about everything."

Maiga sighed. Too well programmed. She picked up her half-empty tea cup, to find the tea had gone cold. Bara stirred in her seat, like someone waking from a dream.

"Here, let me freshen that up for you." She picked up the teapot, and poured hot tea into Maiga's cup and then her own. "Now, will you tell me about when you heard the Prophet speak? Where were you? What was he like?" She laughed. "People always seem to say that great men are shorter than they expect! Was he short?"

"No."

Could she talk about him like this? Pretend to have been no more than an audience member? Perhaps. Perhaps she could try to make Bara understand his real message and turn her away from this destructive path of revenge.

If he was here, Maiga felt sure Ilyan would be telling people to join the Committee fleet, to find their new home. And if he'd thought differently, would she have opposed him? She hadn't followed him only because she fell in love with him. They had argued many times about his ideas. Would she have stood in opposition to him if she'd disagreed?

She'd never faced that choice. What would she have put first? Her love? Or what she considered the truth?

Truth had been so important to him. And now to keep on circulating that truth she would have to sit here and lie. Of course, she did that every day.

I do not know the man.

~o~

Wixa sat cross-legged in the open doorway between the Friss's living area and cockpit, looking down into the hatch that led to the engine room. The two engineers from the Trebuchet were down there, and despite two grown men occupying such a tiny space they never swore at each other. Perhaps they enjoyed being - close. Wixa smirked.

"You boys must be amazing engineers," she called down into the hatch. "To get those Chia guns working."

"The old chief did a lot of it," Alex said.

"Oh, you weren't the chief?"

"Me? No. I'm only a first lieutenant."

"And now you're first officer too."

No answer for a moment, then the other one, Sev, spoke. "We lost several senior officers."

"Including the captain."

Silence again. Hmm, time to pull that thread.

"During the war?"

They still didn't answer. She heard them talking to each other, voices low. Maybe just discussing how to get some system back on line. Sure.

"So, was Bara the first officer then? Became the captain."

"That's right." Sev again. The long-hair. Everyone else looked as if they were waiting for an inspection visit from an admiral, but not him. Wixa wondered what Bara made of that?

"Did you make it back to Earth in time for the last stand?"

Alex suddenly popped his head up out of the hatch, standing on the ladder, reaching for a tool from an equipment box.

"We made it back. Too late." He paused, tapping the tool he'd picked up on the edge of the box. "That was... a difficult time." Pain in his eyes told her that he carried horrible memories. Wixa thought of the pictures she'd seen of the Earth after the attack. Just a smoking cinder. To see it for real... she couldn't imagine that.

"You must have been a long way out," she said, in a soft voice. "It wasn't your fault you didn't get back in time."

An agonised look now. "We wanted to. We wanted to go long before --"

"Alex." Sev's voice came from below. "I need that probe."

"Yeah, sorry." He vanished from sight again.

Wixa knew many ships had started heading back to Earth before the recall order came. Those whose officers believed Ilyan's so-called prophecy. But if the erstwhile captain of this ship hadn't been one of them, and if the ship had been a long way from home, then the recall order would have come too late.

How hard must it be to live with the guilt of that?

Perhaps the Captain hadn't been able to live with that guilt? Or perhaps he hadn't been allowed to live with it? And if he'd also been the one who allowed the enemy to disarm the ship... That had to be later, after the ceasefire, Wixa thought. Before that, the Chia Majan would have just destroyed the ship.

But the Captain had supposedly died in the war hadn't he? Before the ceasefire. Right... Wixa needed to get the timing figured out. Time to be oblique. She smiled when Alex popped up again, and rummaged in the tool box.

"It must have been very hard for you to give up your weapons like that. Very bad for morale. But I suppose the Captain had no choice."

"No," Alex said, voice stiff.

"He had a choice."

Sev's voice was so quiet, that Wixa could only be grateful that her service career had involved listening to whispers more than to explosions. Her hearing might not be as good as it had been, but she caught that. And she caught the warning tone in Alex's voice.

"Sev."

"He shouldn't have given up the guns. If he hadn't --"

Alex jumped back down into the engine room, his feet slapping onto the deck and some fierce whispering began down there.

So it was the old captain, not Bara, who let the Chia Majan de-claw the ship. Which meant he had still been alive after the fighting ended. Interesting. She waited a while, until the boys stopped their whispering, then she tried a couple more oblique questions. But they had clammed up, and gave her only grunts in reply.

Sighing, she stood up from the cold deck, with a groan. Too old now to sit on the floor. One of the nice comfortable chairs in front of the console was more the thing. She settled into one and ran her hands almost idly over the console.

Did she dare try to probe the Trebuchet's computer systems from here? It would let her find out handy things, like when the dead captain last made a log entry. And did that last entry sign off with "she's coming"? That thought made her roll her eyes at her sometimes overdeveloped sense of drama.

But if her intrusion was detected while they were still aboard, who knows what Bara would do to her and Maiga. The woman was several sticks short of a bundle and Wixa couldn't risk provoking her wrath. Because of Maiga.

Maiga was too important to endanger.

But perhaps she didn't need to probe the computer at all. Those two engineers wanted to tell her something. They wouldn't tell her today, they weren't quite ready yet. But she'd see them again. Wixa didn't believe that the Trebuchet just 'happened to be in the area' when the Friss needed help. It had tracked them just as Qacian ship had. And eventually, it would follow them all the way to Hollow Jimmy.

Why? What did Bara want from them? Well, she'd said it in that bar; she wanted Maiga, to lead her company of Marines. What else though? Did she know who Maiga really was? Did she want the Prophet's closest companion at her side? Or did she just recognise the same qualities in Maiga that Wixa did?

Well, whatever the reason, Wixa decided to avoid probing the computer to find anything out. And if - when - she met Alex and Sev again, they'd drop a few more hints, a few more crumbs for her, about the old captain. They couldn't help it. If they wanted to tell her despite themselves, despite orders, they'd find a way. She just had to be patient. She happened to be damn good at patience.

~o~

Maiga declined an offer to dine with the officers and as the engineers reported that repairs were complete and the Friss ready to go, she took her leave of Captain Bara.

"Well, goodbye," Bara said, standing up from her command chair on the bridge, where she'd taken Maiga, still trying to change her mind about that job offer. Still trying to "sell" the ship to her.

She loved the ship, that much Maiga could see. What had it done to her when the Chia's ripped out the guns? Had she heard the ship screaming? Maiga shook herself and collected her wits to say goodbye, to offer thanks again for the help, the tour, and the tea.

You killed all those lizards to impress me. The thought came into Maiga's mind as she shook Bara's hand. Again, to show off the ship to me. To me.

Did she know Maiga's identity? Did they sit in that ready room and play act for an hour? Or was it only because Maiga said no to the job offer, presenting a challenge to someone not used to hearing that word?

All these thoughts lay heavy on Maiga's mind as a crewman led her to the shuttle bay. The two engineering officers and some crewmen were clearing up and Wixa was sitting on the cargo ramp, drinking from a steaming mug. She jerked her thumb behind her as Maiga walked into the bay.

"The cargo is mostly undamaged. I've re-secured everything ready for the journey."

"Okay, good. Thanks, Wixa." She turned to thank the engineers, but they were already leaving the bay, carrying their tool boxes.

"Friendly bunch."

Wixa smirked. "You can talk." She got up and jumped off the ramp, pressed the button to lift it up to close over the hatch. "So, how was the tour?"

"Enlightening."

With the cargo hatch secured, they boarded and sealed the crew hatch.

"She offered me that job again," Maiga said. She looked carefully at Wixa as she said it. Did her shoulders stiffen there? She kept any reaction off her face though.

"If you do accept, can I keep this ship?"

"I'm not accepting."

"It sounds like a good offer," Wixa said, her face still controlled. "I mean it's what you were trained for."

Maiga scowled. "No, I wasn't trained to be a pirate."

"Just a mercenary."

Maiga did stiffen, stopped in the open doorway to the cockpit. "I never liked that word." Even though it was accurate. Because it was accurate. Then she sighed and slid into the pilot's chair, shaking her head.

"Listen, Wixa, what you said before about Bara being... Well, I don't think you're entirely wrong. At the very least she's obsessive. I know about obsessed people. They don't make rational choices. Now let's go. Contact the bridge."

A few minutes later the bay finished depressurising and the doors cracked, then widened. Blackness, stars, the expanse of space invited them. Maiga manoeuvred the Friss out of the shuttle bay, and exchanged some final words with the bridge. Not with Bara, but she could almost hear her listening.

Maiga engaged the star drive as soon as possible and it was only when the Trebuchet vanished from sensor range that she felt her breathing and heartbeat slow.

Escaped.