“Battlelord?” The messenger panted, barely able to express the single word after his dead run into the Battlelord’s presence.

Battlelord Flameheart hoped this wasn’t yet another unexpected problem, but he was certain it was; this entire invasion had been nothing but unexpected problems. “Catch your breath, then report.”

The messenger stood for a moment, breathing heavily, then started. “Message from the Portal Base, BattleLord. The step-portal exploded after the newest set of troops went through. Three dead, two low-ranks and the portal mage. Others injured, will survive but an entire troop had to be sent back to SecondHome.”

That wasn’t just bad news; that was terrible news. “And the Unkaa portal-mage?”

“The honorless was on the other side of the step-portal when it exploded. It is unlikely to have survived.”

Battlelord Flameheart wished he could get some useful help on this Shamed piece of rock; the loss of a portal mage, especially his best portal mage, was a tragedy even if the boy was a complete and utter idiot otherwise. Losing the Unkaa mage as well was even worse. He wanted to blame the Shameful Ones, but They were actually helping this invasion.

Which fact didn’t make him feel any better about it.

Options raced through the Battlelord’s mind and he eventually settled on the only one that had even a slight chance of not losing the services of both of his portal mages, even if it meant hurrying to the support of one who had been deemed honorless. “Send a Scout Strike Group to the transfer location. They’re to assess the damage and recover the Unkaa or her body. Disguise our involvement if at all possible.”

The Battlelord wanted to shout in anger as the messenger ran off. He could remember when the Unkaa had been valuable allies, but that time was long gone. It was still the only reason he’d been willing to accept the coward who’d allowed her Lord to be killed by natives of all things. To think that his sacrifice in accepting an honorless might come to nothing was offensive.

“Ita,” the Sterath mage finally said. “Call me Ita. I don’t understand why you want a name for someone as useless as I am, but Ita will work.”

Ita didn’t mean anything in Sterath; it was simply a collection of sounds. That was plenty for Serenity, even though he knew it didn’t meet the Sterath naming standard. “Ita is fine. It’s good to meet you, Ita; please call me Serenity.” This time, he said his name in English.

“I can hear your Name in that.” Ita hopped closer and stared at Serenity. “You are - you bleed power like a Shameful One, yet you do not feel the same.”

“You’ve seen them?” That surprised Serenity. Gods of any species tended to not be seen that often, and the Sterath Shameful Ones were especially reclusive. Even when he’d fought the Sterath themselves to a standstill, Vengeance had never seen one. Perhaps something was different now? Serenity had already seen Tranquil Conviction. He’d assumed that was because of the name situation, but if Ita had seen one, maybe something changed between now and when Vengeance fought the Sterath.

Ita waved her hand “no”. “One. I saw the Fading Light. She watched-” Ita stopped, then continued softer. “She watched and did not stop the shame. She was pleased when my Clan Lord turned his knife on himself.”

Serenity started to step forward and ask Ita just what she was talking about when the moment was broken by a voice from outside.

“In here?” The voice was female. Rachel?

“Has to be. You saw the signal the same as I did.” That was clearly Allen Ridge.

What were they doing here? They were supposed to be moving on, not coming where there might be Sterath!

Serenity grumbled to himself and shifted back to his human form. He might not be hiding generally, but he didn’t need Dr. Ridge being any more difficult than he already was. He noticed that Ita hopped backwards in surprise, but there wasn’t time to reassure her.

Serenity shouted towards the hallway. “At the end of the hall, in the big room. What are you two doing here?”

Rachel was the first to reach the room. “You said you had some more stuff to clean up, I wanted - hey wait, there’s a kangaroo! Only … with armor on?”

Rachel stopped just inside the doorway and Dr. Ridge nearly ran into her. “Hey, watch where you’re going.”

She glanced back at him and stepped a little farther into the room before she seemed to notice the painted circles on the floor. “Oh! Are those what I think they are? Are those where the portals were?”

“Yeah.” Serenity glanced back at Ita. She’d backed up until her tail was against the wall behind her. “Look, could you two back up? You’re making Ita nervous.”

“We’re making that thing nervous? Just whose side are you on!” Dr. Ridge stepped towards Serenity, clenching his fists.

Serenity didn’t want to deal with him right now. Or ever. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a choice. “Earth’s. Which means I’m going to take advantage of getting whatever information I can. So please stop terrifying the potential source of that information!”

Ita’s muttering caught Serenity’s attention with a single word that she repeated. The direct English translation was “fluid”, but a better translation was “shapeshifter”. Dammit, he’d terrified her. At this rate, he might as well have stayed in his chimera form; it probably wouldn’t have pissed off Dr. Ridge any worse than protecting a Sterath was going to.

Serenity turned to Ita and spoke in Sterath. “Please calm down.” It wasn’t until he realized how odd “please” sounded in the royal dialect that he remembered to shift back to modeless Sterath. “I’m not going to hurt you. I protect my people.”

She stopped muttering, but she didn’t step away from the wall.

Serenity turned back to the two humans. “Now why did you two come here? I’m pretty sure I told you I had some stuff to deal with. There’s no way Ita will fit in the van with the portal detector.”

Dr. Ridge was almost vibrating with anger, but he didn’t seem to be willing to take the next step and actually throw a punch. He’d probably never been in a physical fight in his life; Serenity would need to watch out for his reputation, but at least for now, the scientist was having trouble working himself up to actually starting the fight.

Serenity turned to Rachel. “I don’t think he’s listening to what I’m saying. Can you try to get through?”

Rachel glanced between the two men. “It does seem pretty suspicious, coming back here alone to find the portal then you try to send us away when you’ve got one of the enemy here.”

Serenity sighed and shook his head. “Look … fine. It’s tough to knock a Sterath unconscious without killing, and - she’s a captive. To the other Sterath, I mean. Probably captured in battle, though I can’t be certain. There are rules about what you can make captives do. Making them help against another enemy is within the rules, but there’s a complex honor system about it; I don’t know all the details. I suspect that’s one of the reasons she’s here, it’s hard to defect when you don’t speak the language or look anything like the locals. So that was my goal, capture her and get her to help us. She’ll be able to tell us some things we might otherwise have a hard time figuring out, like where their other camps are.”

Rachel glanced at the still-glaring Dr. Allen Ridge, then back at Serenity. “Why would she know that? I wouldn’t let a captive who wanted to get away know any more than I had to.”

Serenity supposed he hadn’t said that yet. “She’s a portal mage; she was maintaining one of the portals they were using for movement before I captured her. She has to know some things to be able to do that.”

They stood there staring at each other for several minutes until the Sterath hopped up to Serenity and grabbed his hand. Serenity turned and was startled to realize that she only came up to his shoulder in height; he’d noticed she was shorter when he grabbed her from behind, but he hadn’t realized just how much shorter since she was crouching as she finished the long spell.

A moment later, Ita spoke. “I thought you were a Shameful One when I submitted. I should have remembered. The Shameful Ones are not restricted to the Powers of Honor. That you use one of the Powers of Terror is to be expected. You are not Sterath. You do not follow the Way of Honor. But you are my Lord; the One Above saw my submission.”

Serenity was trying to figure out how to respond to that when Janice’s text arrived. It was quicker than he’d expected, but it had still been nearly half an hour since he’d asked.

Will be minimum half an hour from now, more likely an hour. Best option for immediate transport appears to be Uhaul; is that acceptable?

Serenity smiled. That was easier than everything else he was dealing with. He sent back his approval, then spoke in Sterath. “I forgot your people have an issue with that. I should have remembered, but staying within your Honor was never my concern.” If anything, he’d deliberately done the opposite when he fought the Sterath. “Please, sit down, it’s going to be a while before we can leave.”

“Why are you talking in a language we don’t know?” Dr. Ridge tried to sound tough, but after standing tensely for several minutes, it sounded almost as much like whining as it did like anger.

The smile fell off Serenity’s face, but he tried to keep his tone even. “She doesn’t speak English any more than you speak Sterath or Bridge. Do you have a translation device on you?”

Dr. Ridge didn’t reply. He seemed a bit surprised by Serenity’s comment for some reason.

Serenity glanced over at Rachel. He’d been calling her Rachel for days, since it was how she’d introduced himself, while he called Allen “Dr. Ridge” ever since he started making an ass of himself. It bothered Serenity that he was being formal with one and not the other, somehow. “Rachel? What’s your last name? I don’t think I ever caught it.”

Rachel waved a hand at Serenity dismissively. “Lawson, but if you start calling me Dr. Lawson I’m going to start looking for my Dad. He’s an actual doctor, I don’t use the name unless I have to. Please keep calling me Rachel.”

It was obvious Rachel had given that explanation before.

Ita sat down where she’d been standing. Serenity settled down next to her, hoping it would calm her down and that the change in posture would help calm things down with the two humans as well. He’d never been good at that sort of thing; he could do intimidation, but he was trying not to do that these days. It wasn’t helpful when you wanted to work with people long term.

Serenity and Ita were going to wait for Janice to arrive with the Uhaul. Serenity still needed to figure out exactly where they were going to go, but before that he needed to find out what the two humans had planned and hopefully get them back to the testing they were doing.

Serenity turned to ask, but Rachel beat him to it.

Rachel glanced at the two of them and shook her head. “We’ll have to report this, of course, but we’ve spent enough time here. The test won’t run itself, and I have evening plans. C’mon, Allen. Let someone else handle the alien relations; preferably someone who actually knows how to deal with people.”

Serenity waited until they were out of earshot before he turned to Ita. They had time and he wanted to know what the heck happened to her. There was something strange about the situation, and he wanted to know what was going on before it affected Earth. “Ita? Can you tell me-”

Serenity stopped when he heard a sudden thump in the distance, followed by the sound of running. Allen and Rachel came back into sight a lot faster than they’d left.

“I hope you know what to do about a whole bunch of angry kangaroos!”

It definitely wasn’t the time to remind Dr. Ridge that Sterath weren’t kangaroos.