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Tallie signed off from Halsey and leaned back in her very comfortable chair. Somehow Croto had manufactured a very nice, human chair and even a work station for her. Along with a bunk with very fresh smelling sheets. Though their journey was evidently going to be so quick she wouldn’t get to enjoy them as much.
She stretched her arms up in the air. Her back was feeling great! Sitting and even sleeping on that Restan furniture, which was really just various size cushions, had been getting to her.
“Enjoying the chair I made you?” Croto asked. Now his voice wasn’t coming through her translator into her ear, so much as just somehow appearing in her head directly. She didn’t like it much, but decided she could put up with it for what was turning out to be a short journey.
And his words reminded her she was under constant observation.
“Yes, Croto, I do like this chair. Perhaps I may keep it when we get to the Admiral’s flagship?”
“Sorry Captain that would be like giving you a piece of me to keep. Literally.”
“Oh, well I could only hope,” she said. They both knew she only wanted it because it was a piece of him! What could they learn from it? It boggled her mind.
They’d been playing this coy, cat and mouse game ever since they’d left the Falmu. Tallie didn’t like the feeling she was the mouse, either.
“What was this information you were going to share with me?” Croto asked.
Tallie laughed. “You are like a little kid. I would think a being with an unlimited life-span would be more patient.”
Croto was silent.
“I told you it would be revealed just before I depart for the Admiral’s ship.”
“Do you not trust me to take you there, once I know it? I offered to take you, remember, even before you said you had this information.”
Tallie wondered now, was he forgetful, or just so bored he liked repeating the same conversation they’d had at least three other times? Or was he not the all-knowing, all-seeing being he liked to portray himself as? Or, was he having a malfunction? Or was he perhaps just not the brightest of his race, or even in the top percentile?
Of course, he was probably just lying and pretending.
“You know, Croto, we have had contacts with your like on Earth. We call them UFOs. And we’ve concluded you are tricksters, who seldom tell the truth. Oh, you sometimes make predictions which come true, just to hook us in, but that’s only so you can deceive us more.”
“I am aware of what you call us.”
“And speaking of that,” Tallie swung her chair around, and stood up, beginning to pace.
“Those Amferian ships were very familiar to me too. We have records of that type of ship, at least those shapes, going way back. Back even before you removed the Restans from Earth and took them to Restas.”
“Yes, they sweep through this part of the galaxy periodically, looking for threatening races.”
“And you’ve never been at war with them?”
“No. We do not reveal ourselves to them as we have to you and the Restans. They do not know of our existence.”
Tallie stopped pacing, looked around her small cabin. So, they could make themselves invisible? Undetectable?
Now she really wanted to keep that chair!
Chapter 9
“Admiral, we’ve been trying to capture a UFO for, well, centuries now. And these things we now call Watchers are really UFOs,” Captain Bowers was saying, his eyes pleading with her not to order him to try it.
Halsey just stared icily at him. “And so, after all these hours you still have no plan?”
“May I ask, is this our secret mission, Admiral?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“May I ask what our mission is?”
“You may ask, but I won’t reveal it until Captain Talbot has joined us.”
He nodded, looked around at the rest of the admiral’s staff. They were pretending to look down so they wouldn’t be called on, just like kids in school.
“Admiral, I’m sorry I just don’t think we can do it. These craft have been clocked at speeds we can’t even to begin to achieve. They move so fast that to the human eye it seems like they just disappear. In truth it’s because the human eye can’t follow something moving at those speeds.”
“I am aware, Captain. I studied them at great length when I was a kid.”
He fell silent. What more could he say?
Halsey let out a long, dramatic sigh, then stood up. “Okay Captain, you win. Have your fastest shuttle ready to meet this Croto ship when Captain Talbot hails us. I want to meet them as far distant as possible. I don’t want it seeing our ships and the disposition of our task force if we can help it.”
At least the secret cargo the Ganymede and Io were carrying were out of sight inside their hangar decks, she thought.
As she started to exit the conference room she noticed Captain Bowers looking at his communicator.
“What is it, Captain?”
“Uh, it’s Captain Talbot. They are here.”
“Here? Here where?”
Alarms started going off as every staff member received the intruder alert. Halsey asked again. “Here where!”
“They are right beside us, Admiral. She is asking we open the hangar doors.”
“Absolutely not! And how did they get so close undetected?”
He just looked at her with an “I-told-you-so” expression.
“Tell her to stand off and we will have a shuttle pick her up.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“And I want answers!”
“Yes, Admiral.”