Xia Phar had a good life for a human on Saer’kah. She didn’t wear a restriction band and the Saer’khi family that had raised her since the Migration treated her like one of their own. Others humans on Saer’kah though had no reason to love the Saer’khi . At least Xia had some semblance of freedom. So when the humans decide to rebel against the Saer’khi and she discovers the real reason for the presence of humans and other aliens on Saer’kah Xia decides to take action. Enlisting the help of her family and her friend Tarek she forms a plan to get everyone out of the alien barracks without arousing suspicion and get them off Saer’kah on one of the newly built colony ships. Sounds pretty easy right? Now Tarek’s crush on her is the least of her problems and leaving Saer’kah is just the beginning.

A lot happened during the next day and a half, the first of which being that Third and Karran had finished their assessment of the damage to the newly recovered ship. Almost all of the ship’s systems had remained in good working order, with the outer airlock controls being the worst off. Those repairs were coming along nicely though and soon the only thing we’d need to do to get it flight-worthy again would be to replace the shorn wing. The vehicles in the garage had needed a little more work, but Xawin was working on those as he tried to figure out what types of weapons we could mount inside the wings of the Hornets. He was also using the memory archive to learn how to build those weapons. The ship remained off-limits to anyone but our engineers for now though, until Third could start teaching us about all of the technology inside.

Secondly, we had gathered enough of the proper resources for one of the nanite construction kits to begin building the large pre-programmed bathhouse that same afternoon that we had recovered Third’s ship. It had been properly connected to the water pipeline and rearranged the matter of those resources into the pre-set form, and by late the next afternoon it was complete. The required stone, ore and wood had depleted our resources for the moment, but to the colonists it was well worth it. I was already considering using the second construction kit to make a proper colony kitchen or possibly some sort of defenses for our settlement, but we would need to gather more resources first. For the latter option I would also need to wait until I could be parted with Shui for long enough to use the memory archive; to learn to program non-medical nanites and to get a working knowledge and blueprints for whatever I wanted them to build that wasn’t already pre-programmed.

Thirdly our food situation was very good at the moment. I had sent a crew with Tarek in the personnel dropship that morning after retrieving Third’s ship, to gather the remaining applums from the area where I had discovered them. Not only had they returned with the new fruit, but with a large harvest of winguts and lemonberries as well. In addition to all the fish and molehog meat we were pulling in lately, we would have been in good hands with just that. Sarah had gone off to check on that field of lavender grain she had discovered shortly after our arrival though and had judged it read to harvest, so soon we would be able to add some grains to our diet as well.

We also had the birds and the bees to help pollenate our future crops and provide additional food sources in the near future. We had released the bees, which we had cloned, into the wild and the hummingbird eggs had hatched as well. Now, whenever Amy wasn’t working on her studies or giving first aid she was spending a good deal of her time with the hatchlings, watching over them and feeding them a special nutrient fluid with a small syringe. It looked like she would have her hands full soon with the chickens being near ready to hatch as well.

As for our new colony children, I had decided to wait a bit to defrost the other Txela infants because, with as much attention as Shui needed from me, I didn’t want nine of us to be feeling that strain all at once. Our colony was doing well, but we didn’t want to stretch our resources too far with nine more mouths to feed and nine less people to contribute to the important work for as long as it took for those infants to properly bond with their new mothers. In the end I had decided that it would be best to stagger the ‘births’ every two weeks to allow for that bonding time, and to not strain the colony too much at once until we had more resources to work with.

I spent most of that day and a half caring for Shui and doing whatever light work I could, such as setting up the nanite construction kit or working on carving Shui’s Niadu doll when she was sleeping. Our bond was getting ever stronger and as much as I was unprepared to become a mother, I found myself extremely happy that I was. She still in her clingy stage of only wanting to be held by me, but as inconvenient as that could be at times it also felt nice. I was happy in a way that I never had been before. I had a child to soothe that Saer’khi maternal instinct and the people of the colony didn’t see me as a freak or a child, in fact for the most part I was liked and respected. I even had one Tess'hir, possibly two someday soon since things seemed to be going well with Matt.

Life on Unity was good, people were feeling good about making progress on our new home, and the newly finished bathhouse seemed to really help the colonists’ dispositions. It felt good to be making progress and to see actual results of our hard work. So, after dinner that night there was a relaxed and jovial air to our growing settlement. That very night we had even decided to come up with a name for it. I was nursing Shui after dinner while the other colonists all tried to come up with a somewhat suitable name for our new town. A lot of names were going back and forth, but none had really seemed quite right yet and there were only seven serious suggestions so far. “Do you have any ideas buddy?” Matt asked Tarek after somebody had suggested Botany Bay, which was met by a chorus of groans. Still the name was added to the growing list on Dennis’ tablet like all the others.

“I am not sure Matt,” my Tess'hir replied. “I think it should be something that embodies what we have achieved and that represents the spirit of the colony as a whole. Despite being so far from help and our dire situation when we got here, I think that we have done pretty well for ourselves so far.”

“Bud, you just used the words ‘so far’ twice in one sentence,” Matt teased with a laugh. A thoughtful look came over his face and he broke out in a grin. “That’s not a bad name, and it certainly does reflect the heart and soul of this colony of ours. Hey Dennis, hand me that datapad, I’m going to add Tarek’s suggestion.”

“But I didn’t suggest anything Matt,” Tarek said. His thoughts were a bit confused, but I couldn’t really help him since I had no idea what Matt was talking about either. Given that Matt’s ridiculous name for the unity-corns had won and stuck though I was a little curious and apprehensive about what he might suggest this time.

It was close to ten minutes later that the suggestions just started getting too ridiculous, due to the jovial mood of the colonists. We had ten serious suggestions by then though and decided to put it to a vote. Dennis approached each colonist in turn, showing them the datapad with the list of names and any notes on why each of them would be suitable. Once the suggestions had been read he had them tap on the name they were voting for, while the pad kept an unseen tally of how many times each name was tapped. When it was finally my turn I looked over the names in the list: Touchdown, Cratertown, Paradise City, Xanadu, Freedom, Sliptown, Seaside, Botany Bay, So-Phar, and Phoenix.

Although I finally got Matt’s joke upon seeing the list, I didn’t really feel strongly about any of the names so I tapped Freedom, since it was sort of along the same lines as planet’s name of Unity. “Very funny Matt,” I told him as I passed the datapad back to Dennis. “You really need to stop suggesting names for things.”

“Hey, I think it’s a great name and it’s perfect for our motley little crew of misfits. Besides Tarek wanted something that reflected the spirit of our community and I couldn’t think of any good names with ‘Xia’ in them,” he teased me with a wink.

“You couldn’t think up any good names with ‘Phar’ in them either apparently,” I quickly retorted as I shifted the now sleeping Shui into her sling. Then, since I had asked Dennis to make sure I was the last to vote, I turned to the former soldier and smiled. “So Captain White, would you care to announce the name of our settlement?”

Dennis called for attention and once the crowd was quiet enough he used that parade-grounds voice of his to announce, “Our little slice of heaven here on Unity now has a name! The winner, by a landslide, and the new name of our settlement is So-Phar!”

I cringed, probably blushing a deep shade of crimson, as I groaned and turned to Matt. “That’s it, you don’t get to name stuff anymore.”

“You’re just mad because it won,” he countered with one of his movie star grins.

I was about to counter his counter when Tanna pinged me. I could feel the excitement in her mind with the ping itself and even more so when she sent, *Xia you need to come to the communications console!*

*On my way Tanna,* I responded as I stood up. Then I tried to politely excuse myself to Matt and the others nearby. “Please excuse me, Tanna needs me at Comms, I’ll be back shortly.” Then as I left with Kit on my heels I swung around to point at Matt, “And don’t you think this is over handsome, I’ll get you back for that horrid name later.” Then I was dashing off back to the medical ship and the communications console inside.

Tanna was waiting for me with the biggest grin I had ever seen on her face and her mind was just brimming with excitement. *We got a data burst from Saer’kah! I’m de-encrypting it now so we can read it.*

I squealed in glee, both physically and mentally, causing Shui to stir from her sleep. Then, after a small self-chastisement, I shushed and cooed at her softly to calm her before she could start screaming and hopefully get her back to sleep, *Momma’s sorry Shui, shhh sleep now.* Once I had her settled again I turned my attention back to my fellow Ji’turi and we looked over the data from the transmission.

Saer’kah had gotten our message and was sending a kian’ja class vessel with new supplies and equipment for the colony and to help us get set up. As far as they were concerned the colony was ours, but they were happy that we had survived and eager to help us get on our feet as a new member planet of the Interstellar Alliance. They also wanted to trade for some of the mandium we had discovered as soon as we could get proper nano-mining facilities set up to extract and process it. Pharite samples were also of great interest to the scientists on Saer’kah. From the sound of the message we could probably expect the ship to arrive within ten to fourteen days from the time we received the transmission. *Holy shit, they’re sending a kian’ja?* I gasped in awe. Kian’ja class vessels were usually only used for first contact or other uncertain situations were there could be an element of danger involved. They were nothing like the colony ships or migration ships; they were massive, imposing, and bristling with weapons. Think mothership and then think bigger.

*That’s what the message says. The Ji’turi Council have taken your warnings about Earth pretty seriously too from the looks of it. Look here, they have been scanning humans who haven’t left on colony ships yet and they have found a few other devices like the one Eric had on other Americans. They have been finding hidden weapons and some sort of small communications devices as well. Not just on Americans either, there were people from several different Earth nations with hidden weapons or communications devices, some based on our technology.*

*What kind of communication devices? And what are they doing with the people they’ve caught?* I asked in concern.

*They varied in size and tech levels by the countries that had sent them, most were based on our own comm discs. They were small and fairly easy to hide on a person. The council was still having some engineers look over them when the data burst was sent. As for the spies, they will be sending them back to Earth once they’ve been thoroughly questioned telepathically. They have already closed their embassies on Earth and removed the Saer’khi ambassadors. The other member worlds of the alliance will be doing the same. Earth is officially out of the alliance. We have never done that before with a species that we have befriended.* The last was sent in a state of shock.

*To be fair, the majority of governments on Earth haven’t been very good friends to the Saer’khi, mostly they’ve been taking advantage of us. Not all humans are bad, we know that, but I’ve seen first hand how so many of them can screw over other humans, especially if they’re different or from another country. If they can willingly treat others of their own species that way, should we really be surprised that they’re doing it with us too?* I pointed out bitterly.

Tanna frowned, but I could sense the agreement in her thoughts, tinged with worry as she asked, *Do you think this could lead to war?*

*Not open war,* I replied after a moment to consider it. *At least not if there’s anyone with half a brain in office. Half of the countries on Earth are probably still fighting each other, despite Saer’khi efforts to enlighten them. It would be stupid to start a war on a front they aren’t ready for, so for now they’ll probably just bend over and take their punishment. They might still try underhanded tactics or spying here and there, but they know damn well that they don’t have what it takes to beat Saer’kah in an actual war, the tech advantage is just too great right now and they wouldn’t just be declaring war on the Saer’khi but the whole alliance. I don’t think even the stupidest of them would want to piss off the Murqui or Haran home worlds, they’re both nearly as technologically advanced as Saer’kah now and a whole lot scarier if you were to get on their bad side.*

*That could be why the council is sending a kian’ja. To make it official that we’re a part of the alliance and to protect our interests until we can get set up properly as a colony. It appears that the Bounty wasn’t the only colony ship that they lost contact with,* she offered with a frown, her surface thoughts dark and uncertain.

There were some very happy faces and cheers once I exited the medical dropship and announced to the colonists that we had finally heard from Saer’kah. Excitement seemed to buzz in the air at the thought of help being on the way, and the new supplies and equipment that would help us to thrive as well. The news concerning the state of affairs between Saer’kah and Earth though was met with mixed reactions. The optimists among us felt that with the Saer’khi sending such a large and heavily armed ship that nobody from Earth would dare to come after us. Then there were those of us who sided with good ole Murphy and were expecting the other shoe to drop at any time.

I and most of my close friends and advisors were in the second camp. Given our luck so far, and my own distrust of Earthers, I felt that we shouldn’t let our guard down yet and that we should keep going as we had been planning until that ship from Saer’kah was safely within dropship range of Unity. Earth could still get to us first and, though I didn’t want to distrust any of the colonists that I had gotten to know over our journey and time here on Unity, those easily hidden communication devices still gave me pause.

I had gathered my advisors in the dining area of the medical ship to discuss our plans in case forces from Earth arrived first. Once we were all settled I leaned back in my chair, slowly rocking Shui in my arms as I attempted to get the ball rolling. “Okay everyone, let’s talk scenarios and our responses to them. Dennis, Luiza, Dot? You’re our most experienced military personnel, so what kind of attacks could we expect do you think? Our intel from Jared indicates that the United States likely only has one spacecraft available, if that, but we have no idea about its size or capacity.”

“It really depends on the size of the ship,” Dennis said with a frown. “It could be just troops or there could be some aircraft and ground vehicles as well. For ground vehicles we may have to use those Crawlers, it sounds like they’re durable and they’re the only thing we have with anything close to weapons on them. Any chance we could whip up some anti aircraft weapons?” He looked toward Xawin and Karran as he asked the last.

“Not with what we have available at the moment,” Karran replied with a sad shake of his head.

“The Hornets are nearly ready to fly and I should be able to install high powered particle beam weapons in the wings,” Xawin put in once Karran had said his piece. “I should be able to fashion all the parts that I would need for them in the personnel ship’s nano-repair module now that we don’t need it for making plasteel pipes. I have an idea for a targeting system that should not take much work as well. I could be done within two days if Bixx can help me.”

“That sounds good,” I agreed with a nod.

Dot’s grin threatened to split her face in half. “Well that means a possible dogfight, and that’s where I come in. Luiza showed me the schematics and I’m pretty damn sure I can learn to fly one of those babies. We may even be able to harass the ship before it enters our atmosphere if those Hornets really are trans-atmospheric. The cloaking devices and shields should give us an edge in aerial or space combat, but we’ll need the best pilots we have available to learn the ropes.”

“Most of us Saer’khi have at least some basic flying experience with the drop ships and mag-lev transports, but our most experienced pilots aside from yourself would be me, Tanna, and Xia,” Tarek quickly supplied.

“Good, we’ll all need to familiarize ourselves with the controls and get some practice in as soon as those babies are ready,” the buxom blonde pilot stated with an eager grin. “Third, can you give us all a crash course on how to handle them?”

The android tilted his head at Dot as if confused. “I can easily instruct you in their operation, although I would advise not crashing.”

“It was a figure of speech,” Dot explained with a giggle as she shook her head. “I have no intention of crashing.”

As Third nodded Luiza laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to wait to get one of those in the air honey. As good as it will be to be prepared for ground vehicles and aerial or space combat, we’ll also need to be prepared for possible surgical strikes or Special Forces. I’d suggest putting our EM shield up as soon as we know they’ve arrived and use the Crawlers and guerilla tactics to fight them if it comes to that. We know the terrain so we can set traps and ambushes or lure them toward where the crocosaurs feed or nest.”

I nodded curtly. “You’ll be in charge of the Crawlers, coordination, and defending So-Phar, if it should come to that Dennis. Dot, you’ll be in charge of combat when we’re up in the air. Luiza, you and Lirra will work with Matt, the Murqui, the Haran, and the Yazuik on guerilla warfare. We’ll start training in place of the afternoon work details once the Crawlers and Hornets are prepped.”

“Amy and I will handle the medical side of things,” Krie added as she looked at the grim faces around the table.

“I’ll be here with you, unless we have to deal with an air assault,” I agreed, sighing wanly down at the infant in my arms. “If that happens I’ll probably have to leave Shui with the two of you.”

“We’ll take good care of her Xia, you can count on us,” my sister quickly assured me.

That was when Tanna practically flew into the room from the direction of the communications console. “We have a problem,” she announced without preamble, “Someone just sent a subspace message and it was not me.”

“How is that possible?” Mandy pressed, a frown scrunching up her usually pretty face. “I thought that only the Comms console in this dropship was able to do that right now, and only because Karran increased its range.”

“I thought so too,” Tanna replied grimly. “This was not a normal Saer’khi signal and I probably would not have detected it at all if I hadn’t been at the console sending a reply to Saer’kah at the time. The signal is being sent through subspace, but not along our subspace beacon network, and the signal strength is far stronger than anything I’ve ever seen before. Could it be from your ship Third?”

The android shook its head. “No that is not possible Tanna, I have deactivated the subspace distress pulse and that is the only subspace signal that it would emit without someone with a working knowledge of the ship present to send a transmission. I am capable of utilizing subspace laser transmissions to communicate and exchange information with my fellow observers, but I have only connected to our network once since I rebooted.”

Tanna, Third and I made our way to the Comms console where Tanna had Third look at the signal. “What do you think Third?”

The robot carefully looked over the signal that Tanna had recorded before stating. “The signal strength and modulation is very similar to the subspace laser communications signals that my fellow observers and I utilize, except that the frequency is different. It is possible that the device which sent the signal has been adapted from the subspace network chip of one of my counterparts. I must also conclude that the device which sent the signal is on this planet and within close proximity to our current location.”

“So it could have been reverse-engineered by someone who had a damaged one of your kind?” I asked, hoping for clarification, but fearing the answer I might get. “Let’s say for example on Earth?”

“That would be a logical conclusion Xia,” the android agreed. “If that signal is being sent to someone on Earth, I would estimate the time of arrival to be thirty-seven hours and twelve minutes from now.

We returned to the others at the table and I sat down with a frown, my heart racing with anxiety as I muttered, “That signal wasn’t sent by Third or his ship, and it certainly wasn’t sent by us.”

“Do I want to know that means?” Sarah inquired with a heavy sigh. She already did know though, I could see it in her eyes. She wasn’t alone either since, from the looks on their faces, everyone else in the room knew too.

I practically growled, cursing Murphy and his damned law. “It means that we still have a spy.”