Milo finished the report he was working on and opened the file of Zaladore's manifesto and began reading in the Chapter called The Elves' Dangerous Friends.

The human is simultaneously a horrifying and remarkable creature. They fight amongst themselves as much as the reptilia while possessing the arrogance of the Elves without the superior intellect. The proliferation of their numbers on their abused home planet and throughout the sector is a great paradox. They are full of behavioral foibles and seem to sabotage themselves constantly and they not only survive but thrive. In trying times their numbers grow and with a hyper-abundance of resources they explode to an equilibrium of mild discomfort.

The relationship the humans have developed with the elves has magnified the threat they pose across the habitable galaxy. This relationship dates back 200 years when the Elves discovered Earth. Despite their less-evolved intellect the elves found it lucrative to invest in their societies in the expansion worlds in their home sector. The elves would later realize they got more than they bargained for, however. In a matter of a few decades the humans had expanded across the sector and had amassed a fleet of several thousand ships.

The elves feel that their greatest fear has perhaps been realized...that there is someone who possesses more military might than themselves. The elves suspect that the human Union might eventually exceed them in knowledge or have perhaps even uncovered some of the secrets of the grays. The mutual distrust between the Union and the Royal family put their relationship on a downward spiral. The human expansion worlds developed an obstinate desire for independence from the Royal family to which they owed their newly-obtained prosperity.

Despite the best efforts of the Kingdom to assert their superior firepower and military prowess, the elven queen Tarissa was unable to pacify the situation. The ensuing war was much more costly and time-consuming than it should have been, but the Union had no choice but to relent as nearly all of their war ships were either destroyed or commandeered.

Rather than learn from their mistakes, the Kingdom helped them rebuild their torn Earth sector expansion worlds, but invested in their expansion to the more distant outworld planets. This time the elves kept a closer watch on them with more a more stringent economic agreement. As the symbiotic relationship between human and elf entered the second iteration, the elves began to realize something. It was not simply a simple exchange of human labor and ingenuity and Elven capital that drove the made the accord as effective as it was. The human was a source of certain personal traits which seemed to be lacking within the elves: intrepidness and a penchant for risk taking that perhaps made elven expansion into the outlying worlds impractical. It was also apparent that the human could improve elven technologies and use them in innovative ways that the elves had not thought of. This is above all what the elf values in the human and what the elf has been preoccupied with understanding.

Elven scientists are more preoccupied with understanding these traits and how and from they arise, and have become obsessed with incorporating human genes to perfect their genome. It preoccupies them more than the great mystery of how two species with very similar genomes (to the point interbreeding is possible) came to be separated by many trillions of light years. I have not much doubt that the elves believe that they can somehow integrate human ingenuity within their own genome and gain what they see as true brilliance, perhaps on the same order as the grays.

The time will inevitably come again when the mercurial human and the arrogant elf will take up arms against each other. It is easy enough for the reptilian to maintain complete neutrality and indifference in the conflict. But regardless of how the relations between human and elf change over time, ultimately it is a relationship with dangerous synergy that threatens both reptilian society and the ecosystems of the galaxy.

Milo was startled by the door to his office opening and Kayla's head peered in. "Milo! We have our appointment with Bohr! We need to get going!" Milo looked at his watch and realized it was time for his appointment. He got himself up and hurried out of his office and down the hall into the elevator. Milo hit the button for the top floor. Milo could feel the sweat coming to his forehead. He respected Bohr and always felt the respect was mutual, but always found talking to the man in charge of the entire agency sort of intimidating. Milo reached the top floor and exited the elevator and went down the hall to the director's office.

"Agent Greene, Agent Rall" Milo knew that a serious conversation was about to happen when he addressed them like that, "We are ready to send you to your mission. We want to send you to go in two days, if that is all right."

"Sure" Milo said.

"That'd be fine" Kayla echoed.

"Good" Bohr said. "We have reservations for you at a resort in the city of Relanda on the planet Xanadu."

"We're headed to the beach for our assignment?" Kayla asked bemused.

"Yes" Bohr replied. "An organization called Hominids for Sustainable Growth is having a gathering there. I want the two of you to go there undercover as a couple that owns a gurberry farm within the Earth sector and keep your eyes and ears open there."

"You think that Matt Snedecor might be connected to this group?"

"I strongly suspect so" Bohr asked. "This organization appears clean for the most part on the outside, but there are certainly some real unsavory characters in it as well as suspicious financials."

"Is this going to be a joint effort with Royal Intelligence?" Milo asked.

"No" Bohr said, "and in fact, I want you to avoid RIS and the royal marshals as best as you can. They are cooperating with us less and less every day, so we're going to be doing this little investigation without their knowledge." Milo and Kayla looked at each other.

"Don't worry" Bohr said noticing their glances. "Just keep your heads down and you should be fine. You will have some excellent cover."

"Are we going to be acting alone, here?" Milo asked.

"I have asked Roman to rendezvous with the two of you once you get there. He'll hopefully be able to give you some useful leads. I am sorry I don't have more information to give you right now, but I felt it was best to go ahead and get you two into position quickly."

"If we get any leads as to Snedecor's whereabouts, what do we do?" Kayla asked.

"I want you to pursue them, provided you aren't doing anything you couldn't do legally as ordinary guests. The two of you will make a great team, and although some are skeptical of using the two of you for this mission, I have full confidence you will be of use. You will have an ordinary-looking luxury personal carrier ship with some pretty fancy capabilities. Be ready to leave from the spaceport in two days first thing in the morning."

They both finished up their conversation and left Bohr's office. "We need to talk" Kayla said in a low voice to Milo when they were a safe distance away from the office. Kayla followed Milo back to his office and shut the door. Milo knew this was going to be a serious conversation. "Clyde is over in the Sahara. Did he ever contact you to tell you he was leaving?"

"No, he didn't Milo" said surprised. "How do you know where he is?" Kayla moved closer and softened here voice. "I entangled our phone antennae." Kayla said showing Milo the screen. Kayla showed him the display screen showing Clyde's position in the southwestern portion of the Sahara desert.

"You know how to entangle phone antennae?" Milo said.

"Yes." Kayla said annoyed with the question. "It just takes a little fiddling with the tracking software so the connection only goes one way, but it isn't really that difficult to do." Milo knew she was just being modest. There was nothing straightforward about entangling communication devices and altering phone software. "What in the world do you think he's doing over there?"

"I suppose he's meeting with his friends, whoever they are" Milo said.

"I know Clyde well. He's as easy to read as a children's book. I know he's as genuinely frightened so he probably isn't making up the story, but something about the story just doesn't add up."

"So what do you want to do, then?" Milo asked. Kayla paused for a moment and put her phone in your pocket.

"Like we you said, we owe him and we should probably help him. He could be in a lot of trouble."

Milo nodded. "When?" he asked.

"Tomorrow morning" Kayla said. I want this done as soon as possible. "Any number of things could go wrong and we don't want to have to rush back before we are deployed." A beep sounded from Kayla's pocket indicating she received a message. Kayla took the phone from her pocket and looked at the message.

"Got to go." Kayla said. "If anyone asks we're just taking a little weekend sight-seeing just so we have our story straight." Kayla said. She opened the door and left. Milo just sat idle for a moment, wondering if maybe this desire to see Clyde was because she still loved him before getting back to his work.