Star Crossed Kindness

A mission months in the making and weeks in the planning should have had more of a fanfare than the softtinkof boots on metal.

Yet.

"Here we are," Leo said, his voice carried to Gillian and Tessa as they started to segment away the cold, black umbrella that had kept them from telescopic observation - and for a moment, the staggering beauty of his precarious position struck him, all at once.

He was standing on the edge of a titanic sphere of metal - a set of stacked, toroidal shapes that formed the magnetic bottle containing enough raw antiprotons to fuel alien battle fleet. Sprawling below them was the ocher bands and ribboning yellow clouds of Saturn, with the ring system overhead sweeping up and up and up, a cathedral arch three hundred million years in the making. The thick, matte black tendrils connecting the antiproton orbstack to the Leafari staging post vanished between the stars - making the tie between it and them seem intangible and fragile as a butterfly's wing.

This was the 'safe' position of the antiproton fuel. With the bulk of Saturn to protect it from long ranged fire from the inner solar system and with enough distance to use the square cube law to its minimum required effect, the Leafari were in a position to feel as comfortable as was possible with this much raw energy tucked beneath them.

And Leo was about to strap thermite demolition charges to it.

While he stood on it.

"Okay," Leo said, jerking his gaze from the awe inspiring splendor around himself. "We split up. No radio comms once we disconnect the guide-wires. We meet back here to ride the strand back up to the Leafari station once we've placed the bombs. If any of us don't make it back to this location in..." He checked his HUD. "Three hours, then...then..." He hesitated.

"We know what to do," Gillian said.

Each of them had their own detonators. Assuming any of them got their munitions into the right spots, they would be able to set off all the other munitions. If one third of the munitions were planted, it would be sufficient to cause a breach in the orbstack - now, that was where things gothazy. The magnetic bottle containing the antiproton fuel had been designed and was being overwatched by a hazily defined artificial intelligence. The people of the Human Union didn't know if the Fleetsoul would be able to detect and react to aminorbreach quickly enough to save some or even all of the fuel - it was possible there was enough articulation and focusing in the magnetic bottle that they could essentially 'squeeze' the escaping fuel through a narrow chunk of the mega-structure and prevent a total collapse.

But if the Fleetsoul didn't have that capacity, then...boom.

And if we all die, Earth has lost very little but six dumbass twenty somethings and one crappy Leafari frigate,Leo thought, his lips pursed. Earth would be fine. It was hispolybondwould be the one who was turned into fine particulates.

Leo yanked his connection free and tucked the wire back into his sleeve. Tessa raised her hand in a spacer's farewell, then started to scramble along the gunmetal gray surface of the orbstack. Gillian paused only a moment longer, her helmeted face impossible to read through the glare shield. She touched her breast, then lifted her hand. Then she turned and started to scramble too - moving with the kind of erratic, jerking push-shove motions of someone in a tearing hurry in a micro-gravity environment. They had cold gas thrust guns, but each use of even that could send up the signal that they were here, and so Leo started to scramble his own way along the cylcopean structure.

Leo didn't think about his Devonian or Terran lovers. He just thought of placing his hand there, gripping, pulling, pushing with his foot as he came to one of the narrow nodules that jutted from the side of the orbstack. These were heat exchanges and electrical conduits, and the finlike radiators that jutted from their roofs were angled like blades, away from the sphere. They glowed in infrared, but just being near them started to tick the heat sensors on his suit up. Leo ignored it and ignored the fact that if he rebounded wrong and hit that blade of metal, he'd be fried in seconds as the immense heat it was dumping into the vacuum would shift from radiating as infrared light to radiating through contact with his body.

He reached the nodule, took out the first of the thermite charges from his pack, and fastened it to the side of the nodule. He smoothed it down, adjusted the tamper proof devices, then whispered a soft prayer to every god he could think of, from Jesus to Shiva, that no one, no one, no one would touch or even think about touching this thing.

He turned, about to go and set up his next bomb...

When he saw the spider.

It was long limbed, twiggy, and looked to have almost the exact same hue and color as the orbstack. The narrow eye on the front was the only identifying feature beyond its bulbous, gray body, and it glittered in the reflected Saturnlight that shone across the whole of this part of the orbstack. Leo remained perfectly still, thinking:Well. This must be new.

Skar, he was pretty sure, would havementioneddrones if she hadknownabout them.

He raised his hand, then slowly started to wave, his fingers spreading, praying that there was a third alien party involved in this interplanetary tango. The spiderbot regarded him mutely with the camera lens eye, then a voice chirruped into his radio headset, speaking broken but understandable Hindlish.

"Raise hand. No weapon. Arrest."

Leo sighed, then slowly raised his hand. The spider started to clitter clatter closer.

Then, in a shockingly human motion, it bobbed and waggled as a Devonian girl's shriek came over the communications.

"Boomb!?"

"Uh, yeah," Leo said, chuckling. "Bomb." He reached down and the spider tensed more, then held up a detonator. He waggled it. "Dead man switch. Do you know what that is?"

The spider-bot, from the way it waggled, from the way it's operator started to speak in rapid fire and deeply furious Leafari...most certainty did.

***

***

"And that's how the Human Union works!" Bolide said as she sat on the tied up, gagged and bruised looking T'rek, his tail lashing wildly, while in the corner of the room, Skar and Midnight both hastily zipped the dead Leafari up in his own spacesuit, fastening the helmet on and sealing it. They taped his arms and legs together, wrapped him in a blanket, jammed him into the closet, then closed the closet door.

"That suit is gonna keep in the smell," Skar said. "But it's got a biofeedback system."

Midnight reached in, yanked out the suit, then glared at it. "Uh, shit. He said he was going to ask for...what, two hours of privacy?"

"An hour and forty now," Skar said.

T'rek kicked and wriggled on the floor.

"Okay. I think I can spoof my biomed data through this thing," Midnight said. "So long as no one takes a close look and notice the subtle differences in temperature and heart beat cadence, or backtracks the signal, that buys us time."

"Except the Fleetsoul wanted to talk to him," Skar pointed out.

"Fuck a duck!" Midnight hissed.

"Well, we can lie, say that he's drunk and hung over and resting in his room, and then try and distract the Fleetsoul. Will that work?" Bolide asked that of T'rek. She reached down, undoing his gag. He hissed up at her.

"Youlie!" he snarled.

"No, I don't!" Bolide said, sounding hurt. "That is, really, truly, how the Human Union works."

"Liar!" T'rek hissed.

Midnight glanced at Skar, then whispered. "Go help Bolide. I'll spoof this." Softly, muttering. "If I can."

Skar strode over to T'rek and grabbed onto him, hauling out from under Bolide, who yelped as she almost fell on her ass. Tail lashing, Skar picked T'rek up, then slammed him down on the bed, his rump beneath him. She stepped around to glare at him, while Bolide stood beside her.

"She's telling the absolute truth," she said.

"I knew it, Iknewit, you lost your master in the fight, and you switched side to the humans," T'rek said, angrily. "How did they bribe you? Or did you get some bondsnuffed that you started to barely think at all?"

"I bonded with the first Terran I met!" Skar snapped.

T'rek blinked. "What?" he asked.

"I bonded. With. The. First. Terran. I. Met!" Skar said. "Shit, the...they...you have to know that the Devonians here, they're bonded with Terrans. How did you think their societyeven workedwithout that?"

T'rek blushed, his striped features concealing most of it. His shoulders hunched. "Since you sent out on your scout run, the Fleetsoul briefings have been getting more..." he pursed his lips. "She says that our initial scans that said that the Devonians here are slaves to the Human Union are wrong - well, they're not natural slaves at least. They use technology to crack them to their will, to make fake, false bonds."

"Oh, you're a quarter right!" Bolide said, causing Skar to glare at her. T'trek laughed.

"Hah! She admits it, she admits they're enslaving Devonians with chemicals!"

"What? No!" Bolide said. "Like Isaid, we have tailoring centers, that let us adjust bonds if we don't like them. It's the opposite of slavery. See, your society uses bonding as a cudgel, to beat you into position. The Human Union uses bonding to knit people together, to celebrate our differences and our potentials!" Bolide stuck her fingers together, twiddling them. "See?"

T'rek glared at her.

"She's telling the truth," Skar said.

"And why the fuck should I believe you?" T'rek asked.

"Because they let me go anywhere they wanted on their entire planet!" Skar said. "I saw people out there, people like us, who were...were treatedlikepeople. We weren't Devonians down there. We were...humans." She knelt down across from T'rek, so that she could look him straight into his eyes. Bolide resisted, barely, the urge to slide her hands along Skar's shoulders and admire howbroadshe was. Despite her best efforts, her hands kept lifting up, almost touching, drawing away, lifting up again.

Skar, her eyes glinting, continued. "Human doesn't mean someone born on Earth. Did you know that? That's why they call themselvesTerrans, not humans, not anymore. Human is athingyoudo.It's a way of being." She pointed at herself. "I became human. And you can too."

T'rek glared at her.

"You can't win," he said.

"Actually, we totally can," Bolide said, brightly.

T'rek snorted. "I'm in logistics. The first space battle was..." He hesitated. "Inconclusive. But we have enough hot-fuel to throw two fleets just like it, and just as many ready combat pilots in cryostorage. This invasion is going to capture Earth, and we are going to become the first interstellar Empire since the Precursor collapse." He smirked at Bolide. "How do you think you can win?"

Bolide reached into her pocket, took out her handheld, then brought up the diagram of the thermite bomb and its attachment points to the specially chosen parts of the orbstack. She held it out before his nose.

"Half our team have already got those bombs strapped," she said. "If we don't manage to get a peaceful resolution to this? Boom! Big boom!" She smiled, brightly. "No fuel, no logistic capacity. You'll have to switch to producing new fuel rather than new ships, which takes all your energy and logistic efforts - probably strains you out of wartime production for, what, two years? Three?" She shrugged slightly. "In that time, the HU can bring their space production facilities online both on Earth and Mars. So, unless you wanna huck an RKV...oh! Wait!" Her ears perked up and she beamed brightly. "Youcan'tif you don't have the hot-fuel."

T'rek's jaw was hanging open.

"T-They can't," he said.

"No, no, they totally can!" Bolide said, brightly.

"Got it!" Midnight said. "We're spoofed!"

She looked quite proud of herself as she jammed the dead Leafari into the closet.

T'rek bit his lip, thinking. Hard.

The console chirruped. A voice came through, the tones and cocky assurance sounding very much like a Leafari. "Commander Firak, you need to stop fucking whatever Devi pussy you got locked in. Come in."

The entire room went deadly silent.

Midnight made a gesture, pointed at her mouth, then slapped her brow. She grabbed onto her handheld, hissing into it. "Hey, EarthCom! We need a voice spoof on Commander Firak, I know you only got, like, five sentences, but please, please, please..."

"We can manage with some tailored algorithms, but you need to get in the same octaves."

"Y-You have...an ansibel?" T'rek whispered, looking at the handheld.

"Yea-" Midnight started, but Bolide yanked the handheld from Midnight's hands, grabbing onto the ties that kept T'rek's hands clasped behind his back. She pushed him to his feet, her voice soft.

"This is the moment of truth, T'rek." Her eyes flashed as she sat him down at the desk, holding the handheld up. She whispered into his ear. "I believe in the strength of the spirit of humanity - in the will to be better than you were yesterday, in accepting the vast brotherhood of the cosmos. And by helping us, right now, youcanandwillsave millions of lives and chart forward a better future for all Devonians, Leafari, and Terrans." She leaned in and kissed his striped cheek, then stepped back.

"Nice Kirk speech," Midnight whispered.

"Thanks!" Bolide beamed at her.

T'rek gulped.

He looked down at the handheld. His ears drooped.

Then, irritated, he growled. "I was in the middle of not one, not two, butthreefine Devi pussies, Commander Trask, what the fuck are you doing bothering me?" His growl turned into the proper sounding voice - though, only slightly stilted by the alterations of the algorithm, speaker, and his own nervous cadence.

"Hah! You luck-winged bastard," Commander Trask said, cheerfully missing the slight change in his expected response. "The reason? Simple as shit. We captured a fuckin' human on the side of our antimatter storage shell."

The three Devonians tensed behind T'rek, while he growled. "Be right there once I get my dick clean." He turned off the comms, sagging in his seat. "I can't believe I just did that. I...I just lied to a Leafari. For some traitor Devonians. All so I could-" he squeaked as Bolide kissed his cheek again, then hugged him from behind.

"You're very brave!" she said. "Now! How do you feel about operating a laser cutter and attaching some wings to the back of your spacesuit with superglue while tucking your tail down a pantleg?" she asked.

"I...I..." T'rek stammered.

***

***

Leo grunted as the Leafari blow slammed into his belly, lifted him up off his feet, and dropped him to his knees. He coughed, wheezed, and managed to not upchuck his morning meal. His eyes closed tightly as he clenched his teeth. His other hand continued to hold the detonator. He had very little choice - they had taped his fingers shut around the device.

"While entertaining, Kade, I do want to actually hear some of the human's answers," a bored, female Leafari voice rang out. Leo lifted his gaze up, taking in the room around him now that he was not being dragged, shoved, and beaten.

The ride up the elevator with the spider had been shockingly short - electrical motors whirring had dragged the elevator car up the cable connecting the antimatter storage to the Leafari staging post in a trice. He had given nothing but his name, rank and serial code in the initial questioning. Hence why he was now in a circular, midnight black room. Not black as in dark, black as inblack.Black walls, black ceiling, black furniture, with a dull white light overhead casting its stark light everywhere. A Leafari woman lounged in a chair, her wings spread wide and her horned head tilted into a mocking display of curiosity, while two Leafari males stood around him.

The one who had hit him, Kade, glared down at him.

"That dead man's switch, how do we disable it," he snarled.

"How many other humans are on the orb?" the other male asked.

"Leo Tangent," Leo said. "Serial number-"

"Ahhh, he's doing that human war thing," the Leafari woman said, her voice amused. "You know that even if we had signed a treaty involving the treatment of Leafari and human prisoners, you're a spy. You were caught out of uniform, in a ship you specially designed to trick us." She shrugged. "You're out the airlock no matter what, so you should just start talking."

Leo sighed, rubbing his belly. "You have spiders scouting the orb, looking for my fellow saboteurs?"

"No, we're idiots," the Leafari woman said.

"Stop humoring him, Yeshna," Kade snapped, his wings mantling, his fists clenching. "This is serious."

"Oh, it is very serious," Yeshna said, quietly. "But those bombs aren't going offyet. This makes me think that...these two..." She flicked her finger and a glowing image of a bulky spacesuit that Leo recognized as Tessa - the image then bifurcated, showing another view of a more slender suit, this one Gillian. "...don't know that Leo Tangent here has been captured."

"You're letting them plant more bombs!?" Kade exploded.

"One bomb, fifteen bombs, the orbstack is already compromised. We have Fleetsoul working on a countermeasure to their detonation signal, which means we need to buy more time, which means we needthemto think that they shouldn't just blow their whole load, Kade, I thought you were smarter than a kirata in a vade-shep." Yeshna sneered at him. Kade stepped towards her, but the other Leafari Firakgrabbed onto him, shaking his head.

"We should run this by Firak," he said.

"You called him, Trask," Yeshna said, shrugging one shoulder. "He should be here by now."

"He was fucking three Devonians at once, I hear," Trask said, smirking. "A cute blue, midnight black, and bright red."

Leo had thought he was quite...quiteevolved. Emotional speaking. Able to control his emotions. Not a creature of jealousy. And yet, despite that, his heart hammered in his chest and his jaw tightened. He tried to repress the anger flickering in his eyes, but Yeshna laughed, her wings snapping shut around her shoulders.

"Well, well, well!" she purred. "Someoneisjealous."

The male Leafari all looked at Leo.

He did not like the expressions on their faces.

The door in the side of the room opened and in came a tall, spindly Leafari, flanked by Skar and Midnight, the two looking quietly subservient. Yeshna glanced over them, then smirked, jerking her finger at the Leafari. "Firak!" she said. "Send over the black one. I wanna test something."

"Uh, the Fleetsoul requested the human," Commander Firak said, his voice slightly muffled. He walked forward, and his wings seemed to wobble slightly. The three Leafari in the room tensed. Their expressions were all set...and then the Leafari's wing fell off.

"What the fuck!?" Trask said.

In a fight, sometimes, a single moment of surprise was all you needed. Skar hefted up a baton she whipped from her hip, snapped it to full extension, and clocked Trask in the jaw hard enough to patter the wall with a spray of blood and teeth. Midnight tackled Yeshna, while Kade snarled and reached for his belt, where one of those ceremonial blades that all Leafari seemed to carry. He drew it but not before Leo threw his arm around his wrist, dragging him down. Yeshna kicked Midnight off her, before a blue tail whipped around her throat and Bolide started to throttle her from behind, having sprang into the room after the first three. The one-winged Leafari had slammed the door shut and was punching in codes as fast as he could.