“Understood,” Sorvalh said.

“As I said, messy,” Rigney said.

They had arrived at the churro stand. The churro vendor looked up at Sorvalh, amazed. Rigney ordered for them, and the two of them continued walking after they had received their pastries.

“These are lovely!” Sorvalh exclaimed, after the first bite.

“Glad you think so,” Rigney said.

“Colonel Rigney, you’re worried that the only way to get these racist, intractable, assholecolonists is through bloodshed,” Sorvalh said, after she took another bite.

“Yes,” Rigney said. “We’ll do it to avoid a war, but we’d like a different option.”

“Well,” Sorvalh said, around her churro, “inasmuch as I am asking you to do this, it would be wrong of me not to offer a possible solution to you.”

“I’m listening,” Rigney said.

“Understand that what I am going to suggest will be one of those things that never happened,” Sorvalh said.

“Since this conversation isn’t happening either, this is fine,” Rigney said.

“I will also have to ask you to do one other thing for me first,” Sorvalh said.

“And what is that?” Rigney asked.

“Buy me another churro,” Sorvalh said.

*   *   *

“Take another step, xig, and I’ll blow your head off,” said the colonist directly in front of Sorvalh. He was pointing a shotgun at her chest.

Sorvalh stopped walking and stood calmly at the frontier of the colony of Deliverance. She had been walking toward it for several minutes, having had her shuttle land at the far reach of a broad meadow on which the colony had situated itself. Her gown swished as she moved, and the necklace she wore featured audio and visual devices feeding back to her ship. She had walked slowly, in order to give the colony enough time to muster a welcoming party, and for another purpose as well. Five heavily armed men stood in front of her now, weapons raised. Two more that she could see lay on colony roofs, zeroed into her position with long-range rifles. Sorvalh assumed there were more she couldn’t see, but they didn’t concern her at the moment. She would be aware of them soon enough.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. She gestured to the markings on their skin. “Those are lovely. Very angular.”

“Shut up, xig,” said the colonist. “Shut up and turn around and get back in that shuttle of yours and fly off like a good bug.”

“My name is Hafte Sorvalh,” she said, pleasantly. “It’s not ‘Xig.’”

“A xig is what you are,” said the colonist. “And I don’t give a shit what you call yourself. You’re leaving.”

“Well,” Sorvalh said, impressed. “Aren’t you fierce.”

“Fuck you, xig,” the colonist said.

“A bit repetitive, however,” Sorvalh said.

The colonist raised the shotgun so that it was now pointing at her head. “You’ll be going now,” he said.

“I won’t, actually,” Sorvalh said. “And if you or any other member of your merry band tries to shoot me, you’ll be dead before you can manage to pull the trigger. You see, my friend, while I was walking toward your compound, my starship orbiting above this location was busy tracking and marking the heat signatures of every living thing in your colony larger than ten of your kilos. You’re now all entered into the ship’s weapons database, and about a dozen particle weapons are actively tracking twenty or thirty targets each. If any one of you tries to kill me, you will die, horribly, and then everyone else in the colony will follow you as each individual beam cycles through its target list. Every one of you—and your livestock, and your large pets—will be dead in roughly one of your seconds. I will be a mess, because much of what is inside of your head right now will likely get onto me, but I will be alive. And I have a fresh change of clothes in my shuttle.”

The colonist and his friends stared at Sorvalh blankly.

“Well, let’s get on with it,” Sorvalh said. “Either try to kill me or let me do what I came here to do. It’s a lovely morning and I would hate to waste it.”

“What do you want?” said another colonist.

“I want to talk to your leader,” Sorvalh said. “I believe his name is Jaco Smyrt.”

“He won’t talk to you,” said the first colonist.

“Why ever not?” Sorvalh asked.

“Because you’re a xig,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“That’s really unfortunate,” Sorvalh said. “Because, you see, if I am not talking to Mr. Smyrt in ten of your minutes, then those particle beams I mentioned to you will cycle through their targets, and you’ll all be dead, again. But I suppose if Mr. Smyrt would rather you all be dead, it’s all the same to me. You might want to spend those moments with your families, gentlemen.”

“I don’t believe you,” said a third colonist.

“Fair enough,” Sorvalh said, and pointed to a small enclosure. “What do you call those animals?”

“Those are goats,” said the third colonist.

“And they are adorable,” said Sorvalh. “How many can you spare?”

“We can’t spare any,” said the second colonist.

Sorvalh sighed in exasperation. “How do you expect me to give you a demonstration if you can’t spare a single goat?” she said.

“One,” said the first colonist.

“You can spare one,” Sorvalh said.

“Yes,” the first colonist said, and one of the animals exploded before he had even finished saying the word. The rest of the goats, alarmed and covered in gore, bolted toward the farthest reaches of the enclosure.

Four minutes twenty-two seconds later, Jaco Smyrt stood in front of Sorvalh.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, to him. “I see you go in for angular markings as well.”

“What do you want, xig?” Smyrt said.

“Again with the ‘xig,’” Sorvalh said. “I don’t know what it means, but I can tell you don’t mean it nicely.”

“What do you want?” Smyrt said, through gritted teeth.

“It’s not what I want, it’s what you want,” Sorvalh said. “And what you want is to leave this planet.”

“What did you just say?” Smyrt asked.

“I believe I was perfectly clear,” Sorvalh said. “But allow me to give you additional context. I am a representative of the Conclave. As you may know, we have forbidden further colonization by humans and others. You are, at least to a certain approximation, human. You’re not supposed to be here. So I’ve arranged for you and your entire colony to go. Today.”

“The fuck we will,” Smyrt said. “I don’t answer to the Colonial Union, I don’t answer to the Conclave, and I sure as shit don’t answer to you,xig.”

“Of course you don’t,” Sorvalh said. “But allow me to attempt to reason with you anyway. If you leave, then you will live. If you don’t leave, then you’ll be killed and there will be a state of war between the Conclave and the Colonial Union, which is likely to end very poorly for the Colonial Union. Surely that matters to you.”

“I can think of no better way to die than as a martyr for my race and my way of life,” Smyrt said. “And if the Colonial Union dies with us, then I will welcome its diluted population as our honor guard into hell.”

“A stirring sentiment,” Sorvalh said. “I was told you were a believer in racial purity and such things.”

“There is only one race, and it is the human race,” Smyrt said. “It must be preserved and made pure. But it is better for all of humanity to fall than to remain the denatured thing it is today.”

“Marvelous,” Sorvalh said. “I must read your literature.”

“No xig will ever read our sacred books,” Smyrt said.

“It’s almost touching how devoted you are to this racial ideal of yours,” Sorvalh said.

“I’ll die for it,” Smyrt said.

“Yes, and so will everyone like you,” Sorvalh said. “Because here is the thing. If you don’t leave this colony today, you will die—which you are fine with, I understand—but after you’re dead, I’ll make a study of everyone in this pure colony of yours, to make sure I understand your essence. Then the Conclave will go to the Colonial Union and give it an ultimatum: Either every member of yourpure race of human dies, or every human dies. And, well c you know how mongrelsthink, Mr. Smyrt. They have no appreciation for the perfection of purity.”