The REFINED, after being on route for more than a week, finally reached its destination.

Ky’ler Station, a Kyu-Kage owned behemoth in the center of the newly reclaimed section 138.

It was the progenitor company of the sector and a supplier of military assets for Branch. Usually it could handle its own problems with its near limitless Contribution Credit score. Things must have been dire for them to call in military assistance, and to be so secretive about it, to boot.

Nako waited at the bridge for his communications officer to hail the station, since they apparently didn’t deem it necessary to hail them first. He stood in the holo projector’s scanner, and presented himself with the awe-inspiring intimidation that citizens expected of commanders.

Nako: This is lieutenant Commander Sir Tar Nako requesting an Audience with the Executive Director of the station.

He didn't need to wait long before a terribly disheveled and stressed out looking Sulin representative appeared on his projection.

ED: Lieutenant Commander?? Oh, Akira’s blessings have finally reached us!!! We need your troops to secure our facility!

Nako: Secure the facility from what? Your company was not very forthcoming with details.

ED: Much of what happened is still under top secret Corp confidentiality, but we can't contain this threat! None of our licensed security guards can get near them, and our ex-military either get stiffed or shattered after coming into contact!

Nako: I need to know what the threat is, Director. I don't plan on throwing myself at it without knowing what I'm up against.

ED: It's Rajavan, spoils from a military auction. We were given some new amalgamations to deconstruct and produce new military assets.

The director sent data to the Refined: camera files, audio, and a redacted research file.

Nako stared back at the information sent to him. Both he and Tifera knew exactly what they were dealing with.

Humans.

Hostile humans.

ED: A bomb unit and a vassal, self-governing from what we can tell. We lost almost the entire R&D staff on the floor and we've had to evacuate nearly 1 mil citizens from the station itself. That's not including the structural damage and loss of product since they've been on board. It's close to 500 years’ worth of credit lost…

Nako: You did the right thing, Director. These creatures are a new threat and can be extremely volatile. I will take care of this.

ED: Akira’s drowning in her own tears! The sooner this whole rotting thing is done with, the sooner we can get back to production. We’ve had the whole facility down for nearly 3 [days]!

Hurry, Lieutenant Commander!

Link Terminated

Nako could feel Tifera creeping closer, and the eyes of his crew awaiting orders.

Overpowering them with freq wasn’t really an option. While he was sure he could withstand the fury of a human’s weaponised blast, his crew had not been exposed to the devastation and would surely be lost, even if they were battle hardened.

As much as the knight in him abhorred underhanded tactics on the battlefield, this was not a seek and destroy, this was a recovery mission. Nako would have to find a way to convince them to join him on the Refined.

It shouldn't be too difficult. Namegiver Jasmine was civilised, courteous even. A conversation with someone who didn't fall over dead was probably all they needed.

“Prepare my regalia, and have 1st recon deployed. I’ll need them to escort me.”

He felt the entire bridge look at him.

“You’ll be going aboard yourself, sir?”

“Yes. I have to make up for the aliens’ terrible first impression of the Galactic Council.”

Nako suited up in his armour. Whilst not made of steel like his Sulin and Zenthi counterparts’, his carapace allowed him to take flight and move more agilely through the air. He had no intention of fighting the lost aliens aboard the station, so he made sure to look extra flashy and impressive, his finest blue cape pleated and pressed, all the tokens of previously won battles pinned to his shoulder, with the moon red gem taking pride of place amongst them.

His soldiers stood at attention, eight steel-coated Sulin, their right arms held across their chests.Nako took up the rear and drew his sword, waiting as the docking doors opened to the station.

They had been given access to all the station's systems, so they had the run of the entire place, from the habs to the R&D facilities, but everything below had been cut off by the humans. They had apparently been crawling inside the ship's inner workings and destroying everything they touched.

That Included the progenitor rooms, and the hundreds of thousands of potential lives within.

Nako could feel the rage in his soldiers as they passed the broken tanks.

“Forward,” he ordered. “Do not engage.” He steeled himself against his own outrage. For all his time spent listening to Jasmine’s attempts at first contact and being with her, these acts seemed beyond reprehensible.

They followed the trail of destruction to the storage decks below, until they could feel… It.

A dark foreboding, like sharp needles in the back of their brains and a tightness wrapping around their lungs, every step closer made it harder to breathe and think. Usually, aggressive pulses were pure rage, hate or pain, designed to overpower and override the enemy’s senses. If all you can feel is rage, critical thinking goes out the window. But this was different.

Pain, anger, fear, Nako could sense them all but there was something else, a loathing about it all, a clear sense of disgust, he was suddenly aware of how repulsive everything around him was, how grotesque he was, a horrid, despicable, insufferable weakling--

“HALT!” Nako ordered his men. “Defensive formation!”

His soldiers instantly formed a shield around him, melt-guns primed and ready.

The lieutenant commander took a moment to clear his head.

Human freq was both obnoxiously powerful and insidiously subtle. He had not even noticed he and his men had been lured right towards the enemy, out in the open without any sort of guard up.

“It seems you have a lot of words for deplorable!” he shouted. “Care to share a few more with me?”

The freq pulse rippled, focusing its vitriol on the assault team, yet the humans remained hidden in the debris.

“() If that is your wish/you’re asking for it insect/ .”

The pulse hit like a hammer to the chest and his intestines wanted to crawl out of his abdomen, his saliva caught in the back of his throat as he heard and felt the words pouring from their enemy’s mouth.

“Awful(horrid)/grotesque/putrid/monstrous(nasty)/abhorrent/vile/dreadful/(foul)/revolting!”

A torrent of almost intolerable pulses wracked his men, who were struggling against each wave. In the end only Nako remained on both feet.

Had he not steeled his nerves beforehand, he would have been in incredible pain. Akira blessed his forethought.

“Very impressive,” Nako complimented the unseen enemy, between hidden laboured breaths. “I can see now why the upper levels are filled with bodies. Versed in battle, are you?” A moment of pause. The oppressive atmosphere did not lift, however. “I am here to talk, young prince…it appears we have come to a most disagreeable misunderstanding. I am not your enemy--”

“Liar! (Like we’re going to fall for such an obvious ploy.)”

“It is no ploy. You must be very confused, you and your friend. We can provide answers, and better food! You must be getting sick of eating processed waurdess…”

“(I am sick of this awful food, I’m sick of this whole fucking thing!)”

“Then allow me to to take you and your fellow prince away from here. I am not here to fight.”

A wave of panic and confusion hit Nako. A soft blow. He may finally be breaking through.

“(I can’t trust him--)”

“You can trust me.”

“(Can he read my mind?!)”

“Your uncalibrated translator projects your second voice very clearly.”

“()(So you can read my mind?)

There was another voice, deep like a growl, short and sparse.

“(

) Damnit, Bo, not now, what do I say? What’s the word in English? Talking! Alien! (Human friend stay in position.)”

Nako was taken aback. There really was another human there, and he was completely void of freq, hidden from sight and sense.

The gruff voice called out again and Nako tried to pinpoint where the other was hiding.

“I can't read your mind so much as you are screaming it out onto the network for everyone to hear.” The lieutenant scanned the room. Broken vats and machines as far as the eyes could see, wires and fluid covering the floor.

“Alien lie! Not die! () God damnit Bo just shut up!” the young prince yelled. He was arguing with his companion. Then it dawned on Nako, he was dealing with aliens, everything he knew about relationship dynamics had to be tossed in the void. This wasn't a ‘Commander/Vassal’ situation. He didn't need to win over the young prince, maybe he could appeal straight to the unconnected one?

“Leave us!” Nako ordered his men, before they were permanently crippled by the freq being thrown about. The soldiers left with disciplined speed, while Nako unsheathed all three of his segswords and placed them on the ground, then held his hands high in the air.

“I am not here to lie to you, young prince, nor am I here to harm you or your companion. I am here to punish those who mistreated you and to deliver you to a place of safety--”

A thin figure popped out from behind a pushed over vat, clad in makeshift clothes, both hands outstretched before him and dark, piercing, focused eyes meeting with Nako’s.

The pulse was oppressive, anger and hate held him down, the young prince's wishes for him to die were loud and clear but muddied with conflicting emotions. He was undisciplined, and the notion of peace had made his resolve waver.

Nako had held his own against a human cry of hopelessness. One of desperation hit his body differently.

“I’m not lying…” Nako focused all his might into firing a counter pulse, the cold anger freezing the human in place with wide-eyed shock. “This power runs both ways, and I have been holding back…” Nako fell to one knee but did not break the gaze. “I am here to help. There is another human under my care, and there are other creatures from your planet. It would be a shame for you never to see them--”

“Just s-shut up the b-both of you!” the thin human screamed in desperation. His pale skin was tinged blue, his hands shaking. The young one was becoming erratic, truly beyond the reach of reason. If he spoke another word it would likely draw an even worse ire.

If he couldn't speak, perhaps there was another way?

Nako rested on both his knees in a humbling display and began to whistle.

Jasmine loved to sing, she told him about the millenia worth of music humans had produced, yet he had only learned one song thus far. He hoped it would be enough.

Beau stood back and watched the exchange between Ryo and their new alien visitors.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The new captain and his men looked much flashier than those who had come before. The dinosaur tanks were their first clue, the mere sight of them triggering an instinct to hide, and the fact they didn't immediately fall over dead was their second clue that they were up against something much worse than before.

They might have finally sent in their equivalent of infantry. There was no way he and Ryo could have taken on the numbers without his new psychic death powers, but Ryo wasn't able to stop this one, and had completely given up trying to hide.

The flashy alien soldier didn't attack, but Ryo started screaming in Japanese and wasn't telling him anything anymore.

The kid was turning blue, something wasn't right.

The alien soldier put down his weapons and raised his hands in the air. He wasn't trying to fight. If Beau had wanted, he could have jumped out and simply taken the guy down.

But then they'd send more. And they wouldn't hold back like this one did.

Beau didn't want it to end here, but if they had to, they had to.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” he muttered under his own breath, readying for an assault. Then the alien’s calm clicks turned to whistles.

It sounded like crickets and cicadas on a summer’s night, except Beau knew this tune. He had sung it so many times, he could hear it in the memory of his mother’s and grandmother’s voices, and somehow, this bug was singing it now.

Beau stood up to listen, revealing himself, taser lance in both hands, crackling and ready to strike.

The bug did not stand, and Ryo kept shouting incoherently, but Beau stood above the kneeling insect and his voice whispered in tune with the alien.

“... She broke your throne and cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the hallelujah…”

Beau raised his sword beneath the bug's chin, so his many eyes were lifted to his gaze.

“How do you know that song, alien?”

The alien raised a hand, a right one, and made a shaking motion.

Beau’s eyes shifted to the kid, who had since scrambled his way over, a panicked expression on his face.

“Ryo,” Beau growled. “You said you talked to it?”

“Yes, he lie!”

“Lie about what?”

Ryo shook his head.

“He says there is other human, but it lie.”

Beau had noticed that Ryo had stayed a good few feet away from the pair of them. He was shivering. Beau’s brain was screaming at him. These aliens had captured, tortured them, made experiments of them and now they were sending in the peace talks.

He knew what Ryo was saying should have been correct, that the aliens would lie to them now that they were known to be a destructive force, lie to them then recapture them.

But his gut was telling him otherwise.

“What other humans? In vats like this? Prisoners of war? Captured for experiments?”

The alien seemed to have a hard time keeping eye contact, but one of its many hands gestured for itself to stand up.

Beau lifted his head in kind and took a step back as the elegant bug took to its feet. They almost stood eye to eye then, the bug having half a foot on him.

Then it bowed, deeply, a hand across its chest, plucking a red gemmed brooch from its cape and offering it to Beau.

The soldier warily plucked it from the alien’s hand, and inspected it more closely, blinking several times.

What the hell was it doing with a 24 karat gold brooch with a ruby the size of a jawbreaker?

‘You think he got the purse to go with it?’

The alien gestured again, tapping its head and pointing to Ryo with one pair of hands, then shaking its head while the other pair pointed at its throat and at Beau.

“So, you want to negotiate huh...? Fine.” Beau tossed the gem back. “Then let's negotiate.”