"They could have acted on the basis of our hyperspace emergence waves, which surely they found alarming."

Quanshuk licked air in apprehension, a gesture that might have embarrassed him with someone other than Qonits. "There should have been some defenses. Unless their rulers are indifferent to their outpost worlds."

"They may simply keep the core worlds strong and the outer weak, to ensure obedience. Depending on coercion instead of loyalty, in which case it must be a young empire. As dispersion grows, coercion becomes self-defeating." Qonits paused. "Or this life-form may be so remote, it doesn't recognize the danger."

Quanshuk considered the reply. "I must have information," he decided. "What are they like? How large is their empire? Their fleet? At the next world we capture, we will take prisoners. You will learn to question them and understand their answers. Shipsmind can develop a translation program. The Second and Fourth Swarms did it."

Again Qonits nodded. "True," he said. "But such a program requires much linguistic data, along with time and caution. Prisoners may lie. As for capturing them…" He paused, not liking to point out the obvious. "Enemy wounded are potentially dangerous. It is natural to kill them."

Quanshuk flicked a hand as if at a fly. "The physical presence of a commander enhances compliance. I will go insystem with the assault force, to demonstrate the seriousness of my order; they will feel constrained to abide by it."

Qonits' next bow expressed deference, but when he raised his torso, he did not avert his eyes. "You will be risking your life, Grand Admiral, and you would not easily be replaced. You were anointed by the emperor."

Quanshuk answered mildly. "We have yet to encounter meaningful resistance," he pointed out. "And if I deem the situation dangerous, I will stay away."

Qonits placed his palms together in a formal nod. Clearly the admiral would not be dissuaded. And the nature, extent and intensity of the system's technical electronics output would suggest the likely level of danger. "Of course, Grand Admiral. And if we gain no more than some insights into their psychology, they will be useful."

"Thank you, Chief Scholar." Quanshuk stepped to his small bar. "Will you drink with me before you leave?"

After Qonits had left, Quanshuk poured another drink. He felt much better than he had. But even so, the situation had peculiarities.

The chief scholar settled himself at his terminal and turned his attention to the multifaceted entity known as shipsmind. "Librarian," he ordered. And a moment later, "Give me all you have on the interrogation of alien captives." It wouldn't be much, and who knew if any of it would be pertinent here. But it was a place to start. He watched the annotated source list form on the screen. We might learn a great deal, he told himself, or we might harvest confusion and lies. But it will be interesting. I can monitor their brainwaves, their electrical fields… He began to like the idea of prisoners.

Eric Padilla

When the Wyzhnyny arrived at distant Tagus, few people on Terra had heard of Doctor Eric Padilla, humanity's pioneer in cyborg engineering. There weren't many experts. A one-handed man could count them on his fingers. But the technology had survived in old training cubes, and tangentially in the fields of neurosurgery and pseudo-organic engineering. In fact, given a two-week training intensive, numerous neurosurgeons and roboticists, working together, could function as cyborg engineers.

Unfortunately there were no such training intensives. Cyborg engineering had been proscribed by law, and abandoned by universities, and by science in general. Such thorough abandonment would have been impossible before the Troubles, but the drive to innovate, to search deeply and build daringly, had faded during that period. The Troubles: nearly a century of martial law, chaos, terrorism, and intermittent, cautiously tailored warfare. A period during which distrust of government, of corporate greed, of innovation and activism had all intensified. The result had been a combination of technological and business conservativism, and social liberalism. Over subsequent centuries these persisted, though somewhat changed in their expression.

There had also been growth toward a spirituality relatively free of boundaries and mostly of creeds. A growth abetted by the emigration of many unhappy sectarians to the stars. In the new spiritualism, the main approach to dogma lay in pacifism and human rights doctrines. And even these were mostly not zealous. Zeal was suspect. Combative idealism had become much less common. It had served its purpose. The public cynicism it helped sire had largely dissolved political, racial, and ethnic chauvinism in the Sol System, leaving occasional dull scums of prejudice and scattered, hard and bitter nodes of hatred, like social gallstones, to dissolve gradually, one by one, without surgery.

In the process, the cynicism too had faded.

Meanwhile, pacifism and the long peace had minimized and marginalized the military. Even military fiction had become socially disrespectable: a ghetto genre with a low profile. The child Eric Padilla had grown up in Denver, in the Colorado Prefecture. He'd been part of that ghetto. By age ten, his favorite reading had been regimental histories, novels set in historical wars, and especially yarns in which aliens invaded the human worlds. He rented them from private libraries, or bought them on the Ether, or borrowed them from friends, hiding them in his pocket reader.

His mother would have been prostrated, had she known. But she didn't snoop into his activities; unconsciously she feared what she might find. His father knew, and had reluctantly supported young Eric's habit, while trying to keep his wife from learning of it, and hoping his son would outgrow it.

Which in a sense Eric did. At age thirteen he announced to his parents an interest in neurosurgery. At the same time his grades surged from decent to excellent, allowing his selection into prep school, which was quite demanding. Three years later he qualified for university, and begged his parents to send him. University educations were expensive, but with loans and a scholarship, they'd managed.

They hadn't known his motive. His reading had stimulated the belief that aliens would in fact invade Terra someday. To his young mind it seemed inevitable; occasionally he even dreamt of it. And from this and playing war games, he'd developed a powerful interest in the concept of the military cyborg.

In fact, he intended to build one! In an era of peace and technological stagnation, he was a century and a half ahead of his time.

When he left for university, he knew that to be a neurosurgeon, one must first be an MD. But he hadn't realized how little latitude his scholarship left for courses outside premedicine. Over three years he managed to schedule only two courses in pseudo-organic engineering-courses focused on industrial applications and information technology. And having no interest in an actual medical career, he found himself impatient, and in danger of losing his scholarship.

All of that was to change. At a war-game "convention," in an old warehouse in Cheyenne, he met an officer from the small, low-profile Bureau of Commonwealth Defense. Colonel Roger Kaytennae sometimes visited such conventions, where he might quietly talk an especially promising youth into a military career.

Kaytennae had himself grown up in North America, in the Arizona Prefecture. Eventually he became director of the Defense Bureau's War Games Section, where the army prepared in virtual reality for what they believed was inevitable alien contact, quite possibly hostile. Impressed by young Padilla's intelligence, vision and dedication, Kaytennae hired him as a civilian intern, where he could observe his talent, adaptability, and judgement. Within a few weeks the colonel had decided, and contrived a scholarship for his young, fellow American, dipping into the Bureau's discretionary funds.