- Ava -

“Yeah, that has to end in tears.”

Ava wanted to turn away, but she couldn't, just like it's hard to look away from any slow-moving disaster. She put her hand on her forehead, ready to block her vision if she had to. And she probably would have to.

The shuttle hovered in space above Bosh, the Fire Planet. It was a funeral, and outside the window of the Earth shuttle the wooden box containing the dead Acerex warrior was being pushed out of another craft of Acerex design. The idea was to let it fall into the Fire as a suitable final gesture to a heroic Fire Planet Warrior who had given his life for his people.

It made a weird kind of sense to Ava. The Fire Planet was where most of the alien warriors had gone through their deadly Trials that changed them from scared boys to full warriors. So this was both an act of honor and of final defiance of the Fire, as if saying, 'Hey Fire, you didn't kill him, and his soul is safe with his Ancestors now, but here is his body that you wanted so much way back when. Is it everything you were hoping it would be?'

The Acerex both hated and loved the Fire, but only those warriors who explicitly wished for it got this kind of cremation. And Warrior Groti'ax must have wanted it.

Harper stroked her large pregnant belly. She was very calm. “Oh, I don't know. They usually don't go like this.”

“That's right,” Charlotte agreed. “They sometimes have accidents, of course, but this is more deliberate.”

Lily frowned with her coffee cup held halfway up to her mouth, momentarily forgotten. “Still, any time he decides to knock it the hell off and get back to safety is fine with me.”

The Fire pulsated a hundred miles underneath the shuttle, a bright band of white inferno against the dark jungle. If Ava hadn't know better, she'd have thought she could feel the heat from it through the hull of the shuttle and through many miles of airless space.

The casket was supposed to fall from there and down into the Fire, and that should be a simple enough task. Just open the cargo hatch, push it out and then slow it down so it would fall exactly where you want it.

But these guys were Acerex warriors. Doing things the easy way was not for them. So they had ten warriors in space suits lined up outside the other shuttle, as some kind of final honor guard. They were supposed to pull the coffin out of the cargo compartment and then push it backwards to slow it down. That way, its orbit would start spiraling inwards until it would hit the atmosphere and the air drag would slow it even more.

Nine of the ten guys were doing their job just fine, pushing the casket hard backwards from the shuttle and then staying put. But the tenth was not letting go. It looked as if he was determined to go with the casket down into the Fire. He was still hanging on to it as it slowly moved away, and they could see that it was already lower and slightly closer to the deadly planet beneath.

Still the warrior in his silvery space suit wasn't letting go of it.

“That is kind of weird,” Harper said. “They usually never go for these dramatic displays. I guess that one must really miss his dead buddy.”

The coffin and the silvery figure of the warrior slowly grew smaller, and the nine other men were clearly uncertain about what to do, because they pointed and made no effort to get back into the shuttle.

Seeing someone clearly killing themselves out of grief made Ava's stomach knot itself in both sympathy and horror. How could that man now be recovered?

Lily drew in her breath through clenched teeth. “Damn, he's dead, isn't he?”

Charlotte tapped her lips with one finger. “Not yet.”

And right then the slowly disappearing man was yanked off the coffin, which started to tumble slowly against the light from the Fire. The man had suddenly come to a complete stop in space and stretched his arms out towards the coffin as if trying to call it back.

“Ah,” Ava said with relief. “He had a safety line attached to him all along.”

“Looks like it,” Harper confirmed. “Still, it's not common for them to do things like this, even vaguely flirting with suicide. It's not their thing.”

Ava looked at her from the corner of her eye. Queen Harper of Acerex had matured so much these past couple of years, she could hardly believe it. When they were on Gideo Station, just observing the Fire Planet from a safe distance, she had been competent enough, but pretty excitable. Now she was as calm as a rock.

“The Fire Planet warriors have been good for you,” Ava observed, because it was only the four of them and she could talk to her like an old friend, and not like a royal.

Harper smiled. “There's no doubt about that. They bring out the best in all of us, seems like.”

“Or rather,” Charlotte said, plopping down in her seat with obvious relief, “they let us be the best we can be.”

Lily turned her back to the window and finally took a sip of her cup. “I think that's it. These guys see you for who you are and what you can do. They don't judge you for having the wrong gender or the wrong weight or not quite the right shade of skin. They just see what you can do, and then they let you do it. And if you're good, well, then they respect you. Pretty refreshing when you get used to it.”

Outside, the warrior was being reeled in by the invisible safety line, and his friends were still outside their craft, waiting to receive him.

“They do have their good sides,” Ava said and took a sip of her water bottle. “And sometimes they're so frustrating you just want to grab them by their shoulders and give them a good shake.”

“Tell me about it,” Charlotte snorted. “I love the living hell out of these guys. But I sometimes wish they would loosen up. Just a little would go a long way. I mean, look at what we all had to go through to get here.”

“You all went through a lot,” Ava said mildly. “But by the end of it, you all had spectacular husbands. The reward seems to have been worth it.”

It was the elephant in the room. Harper, Lily and Charlotte all had married the most extraordinary Acerex warriors. Only Ava was still single, even if she was the oldest one of them.

“Sometimes,” Harper said and put her hand on Ava's forearm. “Sometimes being married to Vrax'ton is worth all of that. And sometimes I want to grab him by the belt and throw him out the window.”

“Exactly,” Lily said. “But I think that's common for most marriages. Ava, I actually don't think you're missing much that a decent guy from Earth couldn't give you. With a lot less danger and alien stuff attached to it.”

“Damn right,” Charlotte said. “Girl, I know what it's like when these guys won't give you the time of day. That fated mate thing they've got going totally crimped my style for months. And it was just lucky that I met Cori'ax and I turned out to be his Mahan. Thing is, it's not about you. It's all about them and that Mahan thing. If I were you, I'd tell them to just fuck off and then marry a decent dude from back home. Heck, we're all famous on Earth now. Write a book, do the talk show circuit for six months and you'll be so rich you can buy this fucking Fire Planet and put out that damn bonfire once and for all. Find a cool firefighter to marry, just to top it off.”

Ava laughed. “A firefighter seems pretty tempting right now. Yeah, we'll see. I'm not going to push for anything with these guys. Probably I'm nobody's Mahan. That's fine, too. I'll finish my mission and then I'll take a vacation on Earth. A long vacation. Bordering on permanent.”

Harper cleared her voice. “Which brings us to why we're all here, at the funeral of a warrior that none of us knew. Of course Warrior Groti'ax was very worthy and brave, I'm sure, and Vrax'ton was pretty upset when he heard he had died. But usually I don't go to these things. And I certainly don't bring my friends along. So, Ava. Why are we here?”

Outside, the lone warrior had been reeled in far enough that his friends could grab hold of him. There was a lot of manly patting of backs and a brief group huddle, and then the space-suited men made their way back inside the craft where King Vrax'ton and many other warriors were waiting.

The girls had their own shuttle, at Ava's request. Charlotte could fly one better than any Acerex pilot. It gave them the inconspicuous privacy she wanted for this.

Ava straightened in her seat. “So, here's the thing. You all know I've been all mysterious about what I've been up to. And it's been pretty awkward sometimes. Because I trust you guys. And your husbands. And Harper already knows. So I thought, I don't want to keep secrets from any of you. I mean, secrets that are about the Acerex. We're all in this together. All the way since back on Gideo Station. I don't want to create any rifts.”

Charlotte leaned forward. “It's not awkward, Ava. We all know you're doing important stuff. Sometimes you can't tell anyone what you're doing. I've been secretive as all hell, too.”

Ava squeezed Charlotte's shoulder, thankful that she'd taken the edge off it. “Kind of goes with the territory, of course. Okay. So. What I've been doing is spying. Not on behalf of Harper or Vrax'ton or Acerex. But for Earth. I've been spying and I've reported to Space Expansion on Earth. Because they asked me to, and someone had to. If not me, then somebody else, someone we didn't know. And I thought, it's better if I do it. To kind of keep it in the family.”

Lily and Charlotte were suddenly very attentive. Harper looked out the window. Ava had told her about her doings shortly before, and she still wasn't sure how the queen of Acerex felt about it.

“When I say I've been spying on everyone, that's not really what I've done. I've not been spying on the Acerex or any of us, of course. I've been spying on the other aliens.”

“You have been away a lot,” Lily said. “And yeah, I guess someone had to do it. I wondered why Space Expansion hadn't sent a whole task force yet. There are so many weird things about the other aliens.”

Ava nodded, relieved that the girls weren't taking it the wrong way. “Exactly. So the four of us were the first to ever find alien life. I mean, when Harper was first abducted and saved by Vrax'ton. And of course the Acerex have encountered dozens of alien species. Which opened up a whole bunch of bad worries for Earth. Because it seemed that every single one of those aliens was hostile. I mean, the Acerex have been at war with about fifty alien species. Every single species they've met has turned on them. Except us. And the question is, when will all these bad aliens attack Earth?”

The shuttle was quiet. Outside, the Fire was raging silently across the surface of the Fire Planet, sending an eerie, pulsating light across the faces of the other girls.

Again Ava felt a coldness go down her back, like she always felt when she thought about fifty hostile alien species attacking her home planet. Sure, Earth was technologically advanced, and could probably count on the help of Acerex, but against billions of angry aliens, it wouldn't stand a chance.

“It's a good question,” Charlotte drawled, like she did when the talk turned towards military matters. “There's no juicier target in known space than Earth. If I were an alien, I'd attack as soon as I possibly could.”

“It will happen sooner or later,” Ava agreed. “But Space Expansion is puzzled by the whole thing. The Acerex are fundamentally peaceful. Their whole civilization bears every mark of being a primitive society suddenly surprised by outside forces, and then adapting to a state of permanent war. Because they just had to. They were forced to become a warrior society so harsh that ... well, you know.” She nodded out the window, towards the Fire. “But why? Why are they always attacked by aliens? It doesn't make much sense. Their planet isn't that valuable. Its location isn't that great. They don't have that many resources.”

“They sometimes attack, too,” Lily pointed out. “If they feel threatened, they'll shoot first.”

“That's not the way Earth sees it,” Ava said. “They've analyzed everything we know about all the conflicts Acerex have been part of. As far as we can tell, the Acerex have never attacked first. Not once. It's a myth they tell themselves to feel safer. Or tougher. Or whatever. But it's not in their nature to shoot first. They've never done it. All their wars were started by the enemy.”

Charlotte's eyes were narrow. “That is weird. And yeah, I think you're right. My guys are not comfortable attacking first, even in a tough battle. I sometimes have to order them point blank to do it.”

“Exactly. Still they're always at war. Earth has been wanting to know why. And my job has been to find out. I've been going to all the alien enemies. Well, nearly all of them. They all received me fine. Like a diplomat from Earth. They weren't all that hostile towards me. And I've been putting the pieces together, along with Space Expansion. We think we know what's going on now.”

Harper leaned heavily back in her seat. She was only weeks from the due date of her second child. “I wouldn't call that spying, exactly. That's pretty much straight diplomacy.”

Ava scratched her chin. “See, that's what I thought. But there's a really fine line between diplomacy and espionage. And I think I may have crossed it a bunch of times. Snooping in places I'm not invited, talking to aliens who are not officials and asking them pointed questions and so on. But that's fine. Because I think I found the answer.”

“So what is it?”

“The answer is that the Acerex don't have fifty enemies. They have one. One enemy that's behind the others, manipulating and forcing them into war. They're called the Kunuru. They're a pretty nasty enemy to have. And now that we've been friendly with Acerex for so long, you can bet that enemy knows about Earth.”