Page 31 of Blightfall

Arturo leaned out of his open canopy. “If I answer, can they track us?” he called to Alanik.

“No more so than before,” Alanik said. “If they have a cytonic, they can already sense me or the taynix. If they’re communicating only through a commslug, they won’t be able to pinpoint us. Either way, responding won’t give them any new information.”

We all moved closer, gathering around Arturo’s ship.

“Hello?” the voice said. “Are you there?”

Arturo hesitated, then responded via his headset. “Hello. Can I ask you to identify yourself?”

“Clearly you can,” the voice said. “In fact you just have. My name is Ivy. My translator program indicates you are speaking English. That is a surprise.”

Stars, she was already learning things about us. What could we glean about her? Ivy sounded like a human name, not an alien one.

“Who, may I ask, are you?” Ivy asked.

“I’m not inclined to identify myself to someone who attacked my team on sight,” Arturo said.

“You attacked back,” the voice said, “which I suppose makes us even on that front. You’re welcome.”

We were welcome? I wanted to say something to the others, but the only thing I could think was Holy scud! What’s happening? and that would not be a productive interjection at this moment.

And Arturo thought I didn’t know how to keep my mouth shut when it mattered.

“You killed members of my team,” Arturo said evenly, “with unpiloted drone ships. I don’t see how that makes us even.”

“The drone ships were also members of my team,” the voice said.

I blinked. Was she suggesting that the machines that could be rebuilt and replaced were as valuable as our living pilots? The polite tone of the words combined with the casual brushing off of the murder of several of our teammates made me think Ivy might be a varvax—crustacean-like creatures that traveled around in a carapace made of granite and quartz. They were leaders in the Superiority, and they tended to talk about peace while pointing guns at us and casually pulling the trigger. They’d caused the deaths of thousands of pilots. I understood logically that not all varvax were murderers, but it was hard not to hate them on principle.

Arturo shook his head and changed the subject. “Why are you contacting us now?”

“I have been scanning for you since you arrived,” Ivy said, which didn’t really explain anything. “I wanted to tell you there is absolutely nothing going on here that bears investigation, but you began shooting at my ships before I could relay the message. That was a rather aggressive tactic, wouldn’t you say?”

Oh yeah. Definitely a varvax. They were always accusing us of being “aggressive” for daring to fight back. “What kind of varvax name is Ivy?” I whispered to Nedd.

“A crazy one,” Nedd whispered back.

“But let’s leave the past in the past, shall we?” Ivy said. “Come out from wherever you’re hiding, I’ll offer you whatever assurances you need to take back to the Department of Containment, and then you can be on your way.”

Huh. She thought we were from the Superiority, and she expected that we still had leaders to return and report to. There went Arturo’s theory that the ships fired on us because they knew the Superiority had lost the war and were expecting us to finish the job. Ivy didn’t seem to know the war was over in the first place.

“I’ll leave the past in the past,” Arturo said, “when I accept your unconditional surrender.”

Ivy laughed. It sounded tinny and clipped, like an approximation of a laugh.

“Do varvax laugh?” I asked Nedd.

“Beats me,” Nedd said.

I hoped Suki would chime in on the subject, but she hovered next to Arturo, listening raptly to the conversation.

“Why would I surrender?” Ivy asked. “I have a charge from the Department of Penitentiary Maintenance and the Containment of Earthlings to observe the humans here, which I have been doing. You ran afoul of my defense protocol because your arrival was unfortunately unannounced. If you had called ahead of time to schedule an inspection, I would have, of course, obliged, as my team always does. Did your superiors not train you in procedure, or did you simply ignore it?”

Arturo was silent, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t blame him.

“Come out from hiding,” Ivy said, “and we can have a proper conversation about it.”

Arturo stared at the control panel of his ship for a moment, then reached over and turned off his comms. “It’s my opinion,” he said, “that this is a scudding trap. I’m no diplomat, but she didn’t sound like she was trying to make an actual alliance. She sounded like she wanted us to reveal our hiding place so she could finish us off.”