It was sometime later that Barbara, with Ada dogging her foot steps, approached the diplomatic conference room. She had been made presentable. Barbara knew it would injure Ada's pride for her to appear otherwise. Her flaxen hair had been plaited and coiled to give elegance and refinement to the strict lines of the plain blue garments she wore.

No one else enroute exhibited any sense of urgency. Her brow creased with interest. Had anyone else been summoned" And if not"why was she the only one targeted"

Barbara stopped before the door and waited the moment that it took Ada to open it. When the door was fully open, she folded into a deep bow. "Your Excellencies," she said.

She counted the beats of her heart as she waited to be recognized. Seventy bled away to three and a half times as many. Two hundred and forty-five beats before she heard the time rusty voice of Responsalis Kaylock.

"Legate Vardell, we expected you sooner," said Responsalis Kaylock.

It wasn't much of a greeting, but it was the only one she'd receive. Barbara straightened and folded her hands neatly against her torso. "My apologies for the delay." She stayed in the doorway and Ada stood behind her, a hulking shadow. Together they were a study in contrast. Ada with her brawn and height and herself; fragile and small with the top of her head just coming to the middle of her servant's chest.

"There isn't anything to be done about it," said another. "Come in, come in, we best get started."

The voice was jolly and warm, but Barbara knew him to be neither. His face was well-formed with a full mouth and shrewd brown eyes. He was blonde, like Barbara, and she suspected that Responsalis Kaylock had been before time had turned her gray. "As you wish, Counselor Devitt," Said Barbara as she entered the conference room. Ada closed the door behind her and left her side to stand beside two other aids of similar construction.

She took her seat at the table. "Do we not wait for Minister Sheills?" A note of uncertainty wormed into her voice.

Devitt waved off the question. "No, we do not wait. If the Minister was necessary he would be present."

"As you will it, Your Excellency." Barbara hesitated, "to what do I owe the honor of your presence?"

It was Responsalis Kaylock who answered. The elder woman's demeanor changed and Barbara saw white lines pull around her withered mouth. "These words have come from Dar Lugal—."

"Long may He rule," Barbara and Devitt breathed in unison. It was a sentiment that she wasn't sure how deeply those around her believed. Fear brought the words to her lips. She wondered how many others felt the same.

"Long may He rule," Kaylock said before continuing. "We've become aware of a resource and must secure it before the Hastorang."

"The Hastorang have an interest in this resource?" Barbara asked.

"Of that there is no question," Devitt interjected. "You must ready to depart at once."

"What do we know about the territory?"

"Nothing; nothing at all," Kaylock clipped. "We've only a handful of readings to work from, Legate."

"When will the Minister be ready to depart?" She asked, returning her query to Sheills.

"The Minister is not involved in this mission," Devitt said, fortifying his earlier claim.

"I fail to see how that can be so," Barbara reasoned, "who shall act as Plenipotentiary?"

"Minister Sheills has been sent for re-education," Kaylock cut in. The elder woman held a hand to Devitt's budding protest. "It is better that she understand now then to dance around the reality of the situation."

Barbara felt the color drain from her face. Re-education' A sick feeling unwound in her chest. How" Why' She didn't bother to ask. She knew they wouldn't tell her the details. "I understand," she said. "Who will lead the legation?"

"You will, Barbara," Kaylock answered. "And before you ask: there will be no secretaries attached to this mission. You, and only you, will be sent to secure the resource."

Ada pushed away from the wall. "You cannot mean to send her alone!" She complained.

"You shall not speak," Barbara said sharply to Ada. The larger woman fell into a disapproving silence with her hands balled at her sides. Barbara wet her lips and looked at the Responsalis and Counselor. She willed a serene expression to her face, though beneath it she was tormented. "As Dar Lugal wills it," she replied.

"Long may He rule," Kaylock and Devitt answered.

Barbara preferred to sleep through multidimensional space travel. Usually this wasn't an issue. Typically she would be escorted by several secretaries and protective personnel. She also wouldn't have been the highest ranking diplomat in the party, and therefore not a prime target. That had been reserved for Minister Sheills"former Minister.

Lightly, she ran her hand across the coil of her pale blonde hair. With a deft touch she coaxed errand strands back into her braid. Now she had to think: would she be assassinated" It was a sobering thought that brought a frown to crease her delicate features. Could she be? Certainly. But would she be? That wasn't a question she could answer with any true satisfaction.

Barbara trusted that the pilot and his mate had been vetted, but what if the details of her mission had been intercepted" She sighed. If that knowledge had been discovered it was more likely that the ship would be destroyed outright"more so since they had forgone military escort. That being the case it made more sense to be in a chem induced coma, and not worried about her last moments alive. It wasn't as if she could do anything to prevent their destruction if she was awake. It was something new to consider now that her lot had changed.

In the end she slept and the chem cocktail gave her happy, carefree dreams.

In the stillness of her room Barbara found her thoughts returning to the ex-Minister, Sheills. She had known him to be faithful. They had worked closely together for years. He had seen her rise through the ranks from Fourth Undersecretary to Legate. She had no greater champion. If he had been accused of wrong doing"what would that mean for her"

Had she been given this mission, one with such unusual parameters, solely to rid themselves of her"

She dismissed the idea as soon as it was fully formed. There were far more efficient ways to use Satevisean resources than to send one unwanted diplomat out on a wild chase. If they had wanted her in space, they only had to open a cargo bay door.

The Responsalis and Counselor still trusted her. If they didn't, they would have sent her for re-education. If given the choice she'd rather be left to drift in space.

Barbara sent a fragment of her awareness into the ship's computer. It wasn't likely that it contained any information about Sheills, and even less likely that it had sensitive information about her mission, but there might be fragments of data that had been dismissed as unrelated. The sort of information that one of the mind-blind would overlook.

The fact she was on the mission alone told her one thing: the rest of her diplomatic team wasn't trustworthy. It was possible that the other members had been subverted by Hastorang or Venant. Even though they were currently neutral to Tascheter, Barbara knew she couldn't discount that faction either. Perhaps, Kaylock had been mistaken" What if the threat wasn't from Hastorang but Tascheter" They were more likely to have access to the diplomatic party.

Her thoughts hung on one persistent thought: Why hadn't she been collected for re-education"

Had Sheills protected her" It didn't matter if he had (or hadn't) she had taken no part in any plot to weaken Satevis. Her heart sank. Had he sacrificed himself because he believed she might be involved" She pressed her hand against her chest to rub away the ache. She didn't have enough data. There were too many possibilities. The only thing she knew for certain was that she needed to keep her focus on her mission. A successful completion might give her the information she desperately needed. If it didn't give it to her outright, it might prove to be a path to someone who would.

Granules of nutrient rich powder floated like clumpy scum on the surface of her water. The packet claimed it was fast dissolving, but fast was a relative term. Barbara languidly stirred. Her spoon chimed against the inner walls of the glass. A vortex formed in the center and sucked the half-dissolved powder toward the bottom of the cup.

Two cycles in and she was beginning to get the hang of the shuttle. While most of the Satevisean fleet required two pilots, it was possible to make due with one in the smaller vehicles. Barbara estimated it would take another full cycle to be adequate and two to be efficient. That still left her with five cycles of space time to utilize.

She could go back into suspension. The idea had merit. A couple of cycles wouldn't leave her body wasted. The recovery time would be minimal. Except she wouldn't have access to any new data from the ship's computer. She was light on intel already. It might prove disastrous to her mission if she was unable to act.

Barbara drank her meal replacement. Texture-wise it was as chalky as it looked. The flavor was neutral. The powder was only meant to keep her functioning. It wasn't intended to be pleasing. She tapped her spoon lightly against the glass rim. Just because it didn't have to be enjoyable didn't mean the creators shouldn't have made an effort. Maybe joy had been determined to be a waste of resources.

All praise Dar Lugal! Long may He rule.

There was no denying that Barbara spent a majority of her time in her room jacked into the computer, but she had also explored her surroundings. It hadn't taken long. The transport ship wasn't large. A choice she believed was meant to disguise Satevisean interest.

She had gleaned from the database (and sometimes her own eyes) that it was a Masu-class civilian vessel with two shuttlecraft, both Xin II-type. At her end of the ship, there was another closet-like chamber, a mirror of her own, and a larger room that could house several suspension pods or cargo. It was currently empty.

In the middle of the layout was a central enclosure that housed the pilots and systems interface. She hadn't been inside it, but had accessed a ship diagram. There wasn't a common area, per se, but there was an all-purpose area that housed the rations, waste collection and processing, and sonic shower. However the room lacked amenities such as tables and chairs. The room was located on the other side of the pilots' quarters and was the primary means of accessing the bay containing the shuttlecraft.

None of the areas she had seen could be described as lavish, or even comfortable, which made prolonged cognizance maddening. At least her suspension pod had a soft pad and a blanket. She wondered what the pilots' quarters were like.

They probably had all the nice things, Barbara thought. Though, she reflected, it was in all likelihood to preserve their sanity.

But what about her own?

She wondered what sort of education process the pilots had undergone. She believed them both low-function technopaths. Barbara glanced down at her palm as she recalled interfacing with the Captain. Definitely low-function. Maybe they had been lobotomized to promote function during prolonged Timeway travel. Just a little brain scramble to make space easier to handle.

Barbara didn't pity them, but she didn't want their lives either. She was keenly aware that their life-status could have easily been her own if she'd failed to be useful.

Barbara ate up the entertainment laden qubits like candy.

Once her knees began to hurt, she returned to her seated position. She reclined half against the wall with her legs bent to the side. Loosely plaited flaxen hair fell over her shoulder with bits of pale blonde strands forming wispy curls against her cheeks. The medium-weight material of the navy blue jumpsuit she wore kept her comfortable. She had spent the better part of the cycle on the floor and the ground was warm beneath her.

She burned through the sequential image stories and located a cache of loyalist hymns. She sang along with them in her head. There was even a dramatic re-enactment of the Battle of Timeway Mya and the liberation of Octant Vau from the tyranny of Tascheter by Satevis. They were no longer actively engaged in hostilities with that faction, but it was a good story and example of Satevisean heroism.

Barbara had been starved for stimulation and now she drowned herself in it.

For cycles, she had felt alone on the ship. She wagered the pilots hadn't. She wondered what it would have been like to reach out to the two men for company. Her nose scrunched in disdain. Awkward was a word that came immediately to mind. It was closely followed by depressing, uninteresting, and distasteful.

Barbara caught a yawn on the back of her hand. Fatigue pulled at the edge of her awareness. The more responsible parts of her told her she should go to sleep. And she told herself she would after she analyzed a few hundred more qubit of data. Her search had become a treasure hunt that she didn't want to stop.

Until she did.

She felt a feather-touch in the mainframe and the ripple of data manipulation. That wasn't supposed to happen. More so it wasn't in the proper protocol to be Satevisean in nature. Panic danced like angry ants over her nerves. Barbara yanked her bio-filament out of the fitting and scrambled away from the wall. The cup with the remains of her nutrient pack fell over. The chalky water pooled on the ground.

As far as she knew, she was the only one on board with the ability to interact with the ship at that level. The pilot that she had given her coordinates to"the Captain"was low-function. He could run mundane utilities, tell the ship where to go and to collect data, but he couldn't speak to the computer on a more profound level. Or shouldn't be able to. She hadn't met the First Officer. Not face to face; he was only a disembodied voice echoed in a cold, impersonal room.

Dread dug fingers into her gut. What if she wasn't a trusted member of the envoy, but bait?

Barbara scrambled to her feet. She heard the whisk of the pilots' cabin door open. The chance of that meaning something good was very, very low. She didn't have time to rationalize. She ran for the flight of steps to the cargo bay.

The transport ship, like other Satevisean vessels, had protocols for safe space travel. Regulations existed that outlined that objects outside of a passenger's (or crew member's) personal travel space must be secured. That meant that smaller elements were locked inside stationary boxes and larger items were bolted to the floor or otherwise secured. Barbara knew what she had done was dangerous, but she also thought the Captain was dangerous, too.

They left their feet. Barbara had been expecting it. The exact moment the influence of the artificial gravity ceased she pushed off the ground, smoothly propelling upward and back in a controlled glide. The Captain on the other hand was less graceful. Instinct gripped him and he flailed, now weightless, as his mind told him he was falling.

She didn't have much time, she knew, before the First Officer retaliated. The moment of surprise would only last a few minutes before the two pilots were able to control their panicked minds. Barbara's backward momentum brought her to the shuttle. There wasn't time to question her judgment. It was safer, she thought, to take the unused craft. There was no way she could trust that the other craft hadn't been tampered with. Everything that Satevis had given her for the mission had to be sacrificed.

"Your Excellency, please, remain calm!" The Captain directed. His thrashing had taken him to the stairs where he grabbed the hand rail to anchor himself. "The ship's systems have malfunctioned."

When Barbara hit against the hull of the shuttle the impact immediately sent her back on a return course. He didn't suspect that she was the cause of their predicament' Maybe, she was wrong about him, Barbara thought. Before she was too far away from the shuttle, she reached for it. Her fingers skimmed futilely across the smooth panels. "That's impossible," she said back to the Captain. If he didn't suspect her, the longer she could use that to her advantage, the better.

Gravity came back with as much ceremony as it had left. The Captain grunted as he fell on the stairs. She couldn't hold back her own surprised cry as she likewise hit the ground. Her lungs felt like they had collapsed as the spasm of her diaphragm froze its function. Terror clawed at her brain. She couldn't breathe. Had she broken something" Pain flooded her nerve receptors.

The First Officer, she decided, had regained his interface with the system. Barbara pulled herself off of her belly and crawled toward the shuttle. She could breathe again, but it hurt.

"Stay where you are." The Captain ordered her. His voice was weak. He hadn't recovered easily either and struggled to pull himself upright with the handrail.

In spite of his direction, Barbara knew she couldn't stay where she was. She had to move. Using her proximity to the shuttle she turned the vessel on. The cabin door rose. Her mission"and maybe her life"were in jeopardy.

Everything happened quickly; a cascade of events that she fought to control.

Barbara split her focus to reconnect with the ship's main frame. Inside it, she could feel the two pilots trying to take complete control. She no longer had the element of surprise, but they didn't realize what lengths she would go to to protect Satevis"what she would sacrifice for Dar Lugal.

Before the door to the shuttle was completely open, she clawed her way inside. Within the ship's computer she wrecked havoc. It was easy, so much easier than she thought. The pathways were mapped in her mind. All she had to do was overwrite them. Whole sections of operation protocols disappeared.

Barbara didn't bother with finesse. Life support went offline. The reactor's coolant system followed. Brutishly, she ripped apart the star maps and mission data as the shuttle door closed, keeping her safe when the bay doors opened and the ship spat out the Captain, and what air it had left, into the void of space.

Regrettably, there weren't many systems intact. Barbara didn't feel the First Officer, but she did find evidence of an attempt at reconstruction. The lines were incomplete and untidy. A Satevisean newly released from the Creche could do better. She wiped the scrawl away from the data bank.

She erred on the side of caution and didn't try to repair the artificial gravity or life support. If the First Officer had found a way to postpone death, she didn't want to make the task any easier for him. Barbara split her attention between the ship and her extravehicular mobility unit. Luckily, she didn't have far to go. Pushing off the side of the shuttle, she propelled herself to the stairs. There she used the hand rail to get out of the hanger and into the body of the ship.

Maneuvering carefully Barbara swept through the communal area. The main lighting was down. Murky red lights cast off a dull glow from the base of the walls. At first blush nothing was out of the ordinary. It was as quiet and empty as it had always been.

She continued to the navigation center. The door was closed, but not for long. Inside she found the First Officer, his features shaped by death and body held secure by a safety harness. Had he held his breath when the life support had gone down? Had his lungs burst when the void had intruded or had the doors saved him that indignity' It didn't really matter, she decided.

Dead was dead.