This is a farm village. There are farms, over there, and farmhouses, all along a road and as close together as the farms allow, and a few stores, and over there are train tracks and a station. There are signs in an unfamiliar curly script and nobody home.

She staggers, dropping to one knee, and spends a minute getting her breathing under control, keeping a vague half-eye on her surroundings with the Force - there's nobody nearby, good, but she needs to know if that changes.

When she looks up, the droid is there, crouched in front of her and watching her worriedly. ...be okay, she signs, wincing a little at the effort, and then stands to look around.

This could be anywhere; it actually looks a little like her home town. All the script tells her is that Basic isn't the primary language here, and there's plenty of places that that's true of. It being empty is stranger, but it doesn't seem dangerous - there's a vague lingering feeling of fear, if she really pays attention, but no signs of violence, no indication anywhere that people died here.

Figuring that out is exhausting. She needs to lie down; the nearest farmhouse should do fine. She heads for it, gesturing for the droid to follow.

The farmhouse has been hastily and incompletely packed up; there are still dishes, curtains, wilting houseplants, furniture. Very little food left, though, a bottle of expired soy sauce and a forgotten potato.

She doesn't explore enough to find the potato; rooms without beds aren't interesting just now.

She does go to the effort of telling the droid to look for nearby resources before she falls asleep.

And the droid goes to do that. The stores seem like a good place to start.

The stores have been mostly cleared out of food, although she can find a surprising-given-the-evacuation quantity of certain specific things, marked with red paint on their packaging. Non-food sections are gappy but less so.

The marked food is odd, but it's hard to poison a Sith, it'll probably be fine. She brings a selection back to the farmhouse, along with a token assortment of small tools and equipment; it'll reassure Deskyl to know that they're around to be had. She picks up a couple of books, too; maybe she can figure out some of the local language.

Deskyl is still asleep; she brings in a chair and settles in by the foot of the bed to look at the books.

Someone approaches a few hours later in a truck. Alone.

Deskyl wakes.

Hide, she tells the droid, when it becomes clear that the person is headed their way; the droid shuts herself in the closet, for lack of better options.

Person gets out of the truck, puts on shoe covers and plastic mittens, and starts looking for food. She takes the red-marked stuff. She also checks in every house she can get into without having to climb through a window.

She has a really bad feeling about this one house, like some predator is watching her as soon as she approaches it.

...spooky.

She goes back to her truck and gets a gun out of the back, although she isn't handling it like she knows how to use it.

The spookiness is still there, but nothing stops her from going in.

She tromps through the house.

The spooky feeling intensifies slightly as she approaches the bedroom.

Inside by the bed is a tall woman with shoulder-length brown hair, dressed in a black outfit with red and gold rings embroidered at the cuffs and a holster hanging from the belt, wielding a copper cylinder that's producing a blade of red light perhaps half as long as she is tall in a low grip that's not immediately threatening. The woman is staring at her already as she opens the door; her body language suggests 'wounded predator' more than anything.

...alien? What the fuck?

Like, the hair alone could be "someone dyes it for fun and didn't evacuate" but the red sword thing is not that. For a moment Peka's too startled to react.

The woman continues to watch her. She doesn't seem very enthusiastic about her being here.

"........hello?"

No reaction; not even confusion. Maybe she's deaf?

Tentative waving with not-gun hand?

Yeah.

She sighs, and the blade retreats back into its cylinder with a soft 'voomp' and she sits back down on the bed.

There's red-marked food in here. Huh.

Peka tries to come up with a way to gesture "where did you come from, where is your spaceship" but can't quite improve on pointing at the alien and then up.

She points up and shakes her head, and then gestures at the pile of hand tools on the bedtable and sets a small wrench to levitating.

Whoa. Magic alien. So maybe she does not have a spaceship and just levitated here from her planet. That would... still be up? Or in some other direction if the planet's turned a different way but by convention up. Maybe aliens have a different convention. Peka's confused.

She can't do much about that. Droid might be able to, though, and anyway if they're not in danger it's better to keep her in the loop. Deskyl goes to the closet to let her know it's safe.

Is that a robot.

The woman spins back to face her, weapon lit and raised to a guard position, expression questioning and more than a little incredulous. The robot peers out from behind her.

Shit it moved it's a robot how in the fuck does she use this gun is it even loaded

The gun jerks out of her hands and lands at the woman's feet; she kicks it into the closet.

"Eeep!"

Yeah, well.

She gestures with her free hand and the robot closes the closet door.

That doesn't really help there is still totally a robot in that closet aaaaaaah

Well, it was worth a shot.

She gestures the bedroom door closed and makes a shooing motion to indicate that Peka should sit on the bed.

She doesn't have enough plastic yet to make that legal.

Well, as she likes.

The weapon turns off again, and the woman sits cross legged on the floor and closes her eyes.

Peka does not know what that is about.

If she calls her CO the CO is red too, she'll understand, but the calls are probably monitored...

And Deskyl meditates.

It takes a while - mindreading isn't her forte, and reading Force-insensitive people is always harder, and her concentration isn't at its best - but given fifteen or twenty relatively uninterrupted minutes, she should be able to get at least an overview of what's going on.

...Peka calls in a status report that doesn't mention the alien but does say that she's canvassed most of the village and didn't find any dead. She does it in writing so her voice won't shake because aliens with robots, the reds will all die, her baby will die even if she keeps ahead of the payments -

Well. That's... something.

She opens the closet again, signs to the robot, and stays between her and the other woman as she leaves the room. Then she sits again, next to rather than in front of the door out of the room.

Where is that robot going???

The alien has no answer to this question.

The robot comes back after a few minutes, though, with scratch paper and a pack of colored pencils; she takes them, signs again, and closes the door with the robot still on the other side of it. Then she draws - a brown-haired stick figure with a black cloak and a red light-sword next to a hairless grey stick figure; set a little apart from them, a pink-haired stick figure and a pink-haired swaddled baby. That done, she shows her the picture.

Katin's hair is orange. To the extent she has any. How did the alien know she had a baby at all? Why is she drawing them? ...why doesn't the alien with a robot have any electronics? Puzzlement.

Puzzlement isn't panic, that seems like a step in the right direction.

She switches to a light blue and draws a curve between the stick figures of herself and her droid and the ones of the woman and her baby, suggesting a shield protecting the latter from the former.

...nope, if aliens want to replace reds with robots reds are not gonna be saved by blue force fields or anything else. Or else Peka doesn't get it, that's also likely.

This gets another incredulous face, and then a wince that turns into a yawn.

...that might mean a tired alien or it might mean something totally else on account of alien.

She certainly looks like a tired alien.

She calls the droid back in.

aaaaaaaaaaaaah

Unhappy tired alien.

Soothing hand gestures?

Well yeah it doesn't look like the robot is going to attack her right now it's just that it implies sixty-five million reds burn to death in their homes before the year is out.

Deskyl goes back to the bed, and gestures for the robot to sit next to her on it; thusly settled, she signs to her, and then settles her elbows on her knees rather than continue to make the effort of sitting up.

    "Hello?" the robot tries.

"Hello robot."

"Hello," she repeats, more confidently. "Robot?" she taps her chest.

She continues in that vein for a while - soliciting Peka's name, first, and then requesting more vocabulary with mime and gesture; after several minutes the other woman starts signing, and the robot asks her to just talk, rather than asking for specific words.

She talks.

Eventually she sings, out of things to say.

"That's very nice," the robot says when she's done.

"I think I can talk enough now. We aren't going to hurt you. If we need to be a secret for you to be safe, we will be, if we can be safe that way."

"...why?"

"Deskyl doesn't like... the kind of thing that's happening to you, and the kind of thing you think would happen."

"...is she a mindreading alien?"

"Yes. It's not easy, but she can do it."

"Oh. I guess it makes sense to be telepathic if you can't talk."

"Well, yes. But that's not why - she stopped being able to talk because someone hurt her; she already knew how to read minds. If she rests long enough she'll be able to learn how again."

"Oh. - are other aliens going to come here -"

They sign back and forth for a moment. "She doesn't think so. It wasn't something she'd usually be able to do."

More signing - "She needs to sleep, now, but she can answer one or two more questions first if you need her to."

"Was she doing the spooky thing -"

"Yes, she was trying to scare you away."

"She shouldn't do that more, I can tell the greys I found a body in this house and they won't camp out in it and only go in the other houses."

"Okay." Signing. "She might forget; that's from being hurt, too. But she probably won't even if she does forget, if they leave the house alone."

"They might let me camp out in it but they might not. And if we lose the war people will move back here."

Deskyl makes a face at the mention of the war, but then winces again and stretches out on the bed, not bothering to get under the covers and apparently asleep as soon as she's stopped moving.

"We'll have to figure out what to do, then. How long do we have until the - greys? - come?"

"Maybe a couple hours."

"Okay. Will it be a problem if I bring the rest of the food here? Deskyl can go without eating but she'll heal slower that way."

"That shouldn't be a problem. Greys won't know how much was left behind. - the food's not clean, that's why it's marked red." She touches her hair.

"I don't understand."

"Red's've touched it. Without plastic in the way, I mean." She tugs at a glove.

"Okay." She sounds dubious. "I don't think Deskyl will care about that."

"Okay."

"Is it okay if I do that now?"

"Yeah."

She does. It takes a few trips for her to bring everything in.

Peka checks the remaining houses. Apologizes to her CO. Declares the rest of the village clean.

Greys troop in a couple hours later and divvy up the houses. They let Peka have the one that there was a body in, since they can't call a cleaning crew.

Deskyl wakes up when the greys come in, spends a few minutes listening to them, and rolls over and goes back to sleep.

"I'd like to know more about the war, if you don't mind talking about it," DZ says, when Peka seems to be done with work for the moment.

"It's about the food, our country is mad at this country for letting reds touch the food they sell. Because people mostly won't eat it."

"Okay. Is there more that we should know about any of that? It sounds very strange."

"Reds are unclean. Like dead bodies or sewage."

"All right. I'll ask Deskyl about it, I guess, I've never heard of something like that before."

"Maybe aliens don't have that."

She nods. "I would know about it if humans did, I think. I don't know as much about other species."

"There's lots of kinds?"

"Yes, hundreds. But I was made to work with Sith, and Sith are almost all human, so I only really know about humans and a few other important ones."

"What's a Sith?"

"Sith are one of the kinds of people who can do things with the Force, like reading minds or moving things without touching them."

"So like a wizard. Okay."

"Sure."

"Why are you here?"

"The people who were hurting her came to take her again, and she panicked and brought us here. It's not something Sith can usually do, and I don't know if she chose the place somehow - I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet, she fell asleep almost as soon as we got here."

"It's an odd place to pick. Anybody would've been real excited to have you. Everybody wants to go to other planets, more than anything."

"She wouldn't have wanted to go someplace where being there would hurt people, though. And that matters, with the Force."

"People wanna invent robots to do our jobs and then they won't have to have us around any more."

"Yeah."

"Do you want a hug?"

"If you touch me and then touch other stuff people'll be mad."

"Oh."

She nudges Deskyl. The woman is grumpy about being awoken, and rolls back over and goes to sleep after a brief exchange that ends with her making an incredulous face and firmly shaking her head, and then DZ stands and hugs Peka.

...aw, robot hug.

Yeah.

"I hope we can help you."

"Can you get us a planet for reds?"

"Maybe. Deskyl knows some engineering; I don't know if she knows enough to build a spaceship, but she might, or she might be able to figure it out."

"...a faster than light one not just a moon shuttle?"

"One with a hyperdrive, yes."

"Are most planets ones we can just go live on with air and things?"

"Not most of them, but they're common enough."

"A whole planet just for reds would be the best thing. Then the clean folks can have all the robots they want and won't kill us."

"Well, I'm sure she won't mind helping with that, once she's feeling better."

"Will that take a long time? We're probably moving on tomorrow."

"Oh. Yes, quite a lot more than that. No less than twenty days, I expect, maybe several times that if she's in worse shape than I think or is interrupted often."

"Oh. - if you find people around here they don't speak this language, I don't know any Voan."

"It seems like I shouldn't be trying to talk to them anyway, or even letting them see me if I can help it."

"Well what are you gonna do then?"

"I don't know. I'll need to ask Deskyl, once she's awake."

"Uh, if you wind up doing anything that gets money I need money for my baby."

"Is there a safe way for me to do that?"

"Reds'll be scared of you but anybody else'll be really excited. Deskyl looks like an Amentan except with funny hair, she could pass for having dyed it?"

"I meant while Deskyl is healing - it sounds like they might want to take me apart, if they want to learn how to make robots. She won't let them, but it'll be a problem if that happens before she's healed."

"I don't think anybody left behind a computer or anything. I can't afford a new pocket everything if I gave you mine to use, I'm spending everything on payments for the baby -"

"- payments for the baby?"

"I didn't have a credit, I had to get one late, it's really expensive so I'm doing it in installments."

"- I don't know what you mean."

"...a child credit. Because of population controls."

"Oh. Humans don't have that, either. I mean, I guess they might somewhere, there are millions of planets, but it's not common."

"I guess you wouldn't have to do population controls if you had millions of planets! We only have this one."

"Yes. Well, anyway, I don't think there's a way for us to help with that, but if I find one I'll do it."

Nod.

Deskyl rolls over and peers at her.

Wave.

Yeah, sure.

She signs to the droid, makes a face at the reply, signs again.

"She wants to know what happens if you don't make your payments."

"They shoot my baby."

That sure does seem to be an argument they're having.

She taps at her pocket everything while they argue in alien sign language.

Deskyl wins.

"So... if she's going to be awake... how can we help?"

"...if you went to talk to clean people and wanted money they'd give it to you, they'll give you anything you want if you might be able to do planets. Or you could just hide and find some way to make money I guess."

"Who should we talk to, and how do we find them?"

"The language you speak is called Tapap. Tapa's that way. I don't know who it is who would be supposed to talk to aliens."

"Okay."

More signing; Deskyl goes back to sleep.

"We'll leave after you do."

"- my name's Peka Atan, if you want to find me again."

"Okay. Is that all we need?"

"I guess there might be other people named Peka Atan. I'm the only one in Sampika."

"All right."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. I hope we can do it."

"Do you need to know anything else or should I go get sleep?"

"I think we'll be okay. Good night."

"Good night. Thank you."

She goes and crashes elsewhere in the house.

Deskyl sleeps through the night; DZ reads.

In the morning Peka is obliged to pack up and move out before she has a chance to say goodbye.

And Deskyl and DZ head for Tapa in a pair of abandoned tractors.

There's a checkpoint they'd have to pass to cross the border; it's manned, so Deskyl can tell in advance.

Deskyl calls a stop when it comes into range, and directs Daisy to join her in her tractor; it's a tight fit, but better than leaving her vulnerable. Then they approach the checkpoint.

There are greys there in uniform. They are suspicious of the tractor. "Stop!"

She stops, signs stay behind me, and dismounts the tractor; DZ follows.

The greys are confused about the brown hair and about the robot.

"State your business!"

There's a pause, and then Deskyl signs to Daisy.

"We were told to come this way, sir - Master Deskyl is an engineer, she might be able to build you a spaceship."

"- who told you to come here?"

("- hair's brown -"

"Could be dye."

"Robot. Literal sign language robot. Doesn't have room for a person in it to be faking."

"- yeah that part I don't know."

"The hell kind of accent is that though? Almost red."

"Do I look like I know accents? Maybe somewhere downcountry.")

"A group of greys came through the town we started in. We were hiding, but their red found us and sent us here."

("We'd have got a report like that -"

"Sure, if the lazy piece of shit bothered.")

"We're going to have to contact our superiors about this."

"All right."

Greys contact superiors and escalate up.

"Have you got anything besides one of you being a robot to prove that you're aliens -"

DZ steps forward so Deskyl can see her sign; when she's returned to her position, Deskyl covers her arm with a sleeve of lightning.

("Whoa."

"I've seen better special effects."

"This isn't a movie, you idiot.")

"They're gonna send you a helicopter."

"All right."

She signs to Deskyl again and they return to the tractor.

"Thank you in advance for the spaceship!" calls a grey.

Yeah, all right.

And in surprisingly short order: helicopter!

They stay in the tractor and wait for it to land.

The helicopter lands. A grey hops out and talks to the other greys. A yellow approaches the tractor.

"Hello."

"Hello! I'm Mosha Amkape. What should we call you?"

"This is Deskyl and I'm DZ-twelve-Q, DZ for short."

"It's a pleasure to meet you. Can I answer any questions for you before we get in the helicopter?"

"We've only been here a few days, we don't know very much yet."

"We'll be happy to catch you up on anything you need to know. The trip back in will take about twenty minutes."

"All right."

"We'll need a place to stay as soon as possible - Deskyl is recovering from an injury and should be resting as much as she can."

"Of course - what kind of facilities does she need -"

They confer.

"She's used to having a suite with a work room and an exercise room of her own; the exercise room is more important."

"That can definitely be arranged." Mosha taps her pocket everything. "Any specific equipment - that we might have -"

"Not for now-" Deskyl interrupts her. "She'll want a sparring partner, so she doesn't get out of practice, she says. For - I don't have the word - like a knife, but long."

"Sword. Okay. We can find someone who knows how to swordfight."

Nod. "And whatever information is available on the spacecraft you already have - she is an engineer, but spaceships aren't her specialty, she's going to have to re-invent some of it."

"We've got moon shuttles, she can have everything we've got on those for sure."

"Okay."

More signing.

"That should be fine, then."

"Great. If you'll follow me?"

And to helicopter.

To the helicopter. (Deskyl continues to be grumpy and suspicious, but gets on without complaint.)

And the helicopter rises into the air and takes them farther into Tapa.

Deskyl and DZ sign to each other, intermittently. Deskyl seems tenser and more withdrawn as the flight proceeds.

The cities are tall and full. Trains run between them. Mosha provides color commentary on what towns they're passing over.

Eventually they land on a helipad on top of a skyscraper in the downtown of a big city.

When the helicopter lands, Deskyl closes her eyes for a moment, and then seems less, and slightly differently, tense - wary, rather than pained.

She and DZ follow their guide off the helicopter.

Their guide says, "We've gotten you a hotel suite just across the street. They don't have a helipad but we can take the skybridge."

The skybridge is several floors down by elevator and goes from the capitol building's balcony to the hotel's secondary reception room on the fortieth story.

Yup, this sure is a city. Some of the art and architecture is interesting, but Deskyl keeps her focus.

The suite has lots of space, including a bathroom, a hastily repurposed second bedroom with gym mats over the carpet and wooden practice swords in several shapes, and a third room that's done up as an office. There are two beds, perhaps as a just-in-case if the robot likes to lie down.

She examines it and nods approvingly.

    "What should we do for meals?"

"We can have you brought room service, if you eat the same sorts of things Amentans do."

"She seems to, yes. I don't eat."

"Do you need people working on power conversion for you?"

"Deskyl would rather handle that herself; she'll need tools and supplies. But it's not urgent."

"All right. There's a couple of guest computers in the desk, do you need an introduction to those? Are there tools and supplies I should have brought now?"

"I don't have much technical vocabulary yet; I wouldn't know how to explain what she wanted. A dictionary would help, or some textbooks."

"I can show you how to find those on the computers." She does.

DZ is a quick study, but it's pretty obvious she's never used this style of computer before.

(As soon as they're out of the room, Deskyl near-literally collapses on the bed.)

When DZ has been instructed in all the computer things she wants to know Mosha shows her how to send her a message if she needs anything else, and how to order room service, and says that some blues will probably want to swing by and talk spaceships and robots whenever it's convenient for them.

It's getting pretty late; it should be okay for the blues to come by tomorrow, though.

Of course!

And Mosha excuses herself.

DZ orders dinner, and looks up how castes work, and wakes Deskyl to eat. She's pretty exhausted, so the droid doesn't bother with anything unnecessary, just lets her know that there are visitors planned for tomorrow and sends her back to bed before returning to the computer.

Dinner is brought by a friendly purple who is very professional about being so, so excited that aliens and robots exist.

The computer has a very thorough dictionary and will bring up results on anything DZ searches for.

She reads through the dictionary, and then gets started on learning as much about Amentans as she knows about humans. When the hotel's kitchen is ready to serve breakfast, she takes a break to order something, and then wakes Deskyl to get her showered and dressed before it shows up.

Deskyl doesn't want to get up, and fusses until she comes awake enough to notice that she can't feel anyone nearby: that wakes her up all at once. Where are we? What happened?

    An alien planet. It's okay, we're safe.

I don't remember.

    Yeah, you pushed yourself really hard yesterday. They were going to take you again, do you remember that?

No.

    And you panicked, and suddenly we were here. The aliens want spaceships and robots.

You're mine.

    Yeah. They've been polite to me so far.

Good, they'd better be.

    They want to talk to you about spaceships and robots, today. You told them you'd help with the spaceships.

...why?

    It's a little complicated. We met someone who helped us, yesterday, and she needs money to keep her baby safe, and this is a way for us to get some.

Okay, that makes sense. You're taking care of it?

    Yeah.

Okay. Anything else?

    Nothing important. You need to get ready for breakfast now, it's being delivered.

Okay.

Friendly purple comes in with breakfast!

Friendly droid takes it!

Friendly purple backs out of the room, grinning ear to ear! He's so happy! Planets!

Gosh that's kind of creepy.

Do they know I'm a Sith?

    Not really. You've shown them a few things, but they don't know about the Force at all.

Okay.

Breakfast.

The purple comes back to take the dishes away and turn over the contents of the bathroom for them.

This is still creepy and she's suspicious of it. She very carefully opens up her emotion sense, just a sliver: anything there to be suspicious of?

The rooms adjacent to this one in all directions have been cleared out except for one diagonally across from her in the hall, where some people are waiting eagerly to talk to her about spaceships and robots.

A reasonable approach to security. And the purple?

Merrily replaces her towels and wheels his cart out.

Creepy.

She checks with DZ to make sure there's nothing she needs to know first, and goes to knock on the eager peoples' door.

They were expecting to be summoned by computer message but this way works too! They are blue and green and yellow including Mosha.

"Hello!" says a blue.

Deskyl steps aside to let DZ into the room. "Hello," the droid replies.

"Is the hotel room working all right for you? We can set up something else if you'd prefer." Their room has a floorplan like hers but they've got it set up with carrels and chairs and no beds.

"It's been fine, thank you." She follows Deskyl to the chairs and sits next to her.

"We're more excited than we can say about the prospect of faster-than-light travel, but since Deskyl's recuperating it can wait on her feeling better if that would be easier. In the meantime we'd love to know more about the civilization you're from and how you came to be here."

"Of course." She signs to her companion, and then launches into an explanation.

The civilization they're from is a sprawling one; it's hard to get a comprehensive survey, but there are millions of inhabited planets, possibly tens of millions. Most of them are quite a bit less densely populated than Amenta; humans - the dominant species in most places; Deskyl is one - don't spring and have a much lower reproductive drive than Amentans do, so population pressure is much less of a concern. Humans also don't have castes, and seem to inherit fewer traits in general, but otherwise are very much like Amentans; this isn't surprising, there are hundreds of known sentient species and many of them are fairly similar to humans. Tech-wise they have spaceships of various kinds, space stations, droids of various kinds, high-quality prosthetics, and so on.

Sith - the closest concept in Tapap is 'wizards', but it isn't very close - are a rare subset of humans and some other species, who can do things that are essentially magic; telekinesis, physical enhancement, sensory powers, and minor mental effects are all common abilities for them.  Deskyl is a Sith - she pauses to ask Deskyl for a demonstration of the telekinesis, which she gives, sending a pen tumbling in midair around the room - and she teleported them here when she was attacked by another Sith. Teleportation isn't something Sith can usually do; now that she's done it once, she may be able to figure out how to do it again, but that isn't very likely.

Everyone is fascinated.

"And you're her interpreter? Is that a common role for robots?"

"More like a personal assistant, which isn't very common; my line is intended as general-purpose servants, though, so it's not very different. And protocol robots are commonly used for translation, particularly in diplomatic contexts."

"What other castes of robot are there?"

"There are five - we don't go by color; the classes are numbered instead. The first class is uncommon and does relatively pure science; math and astronomy and biology. Medical robots are also considered class one. Class two robots do applied science - maintenance of other machines, terraforming, engineering work, and so on. Class three robots are intended to interact with humans and other biological species; servants and protocol droids are the most common, but there are also lines that are made for tutoring or childcare or other similar tasks. Class four robots are fighters, and class five are built for unskilled labor or very specific tasks, like handling dangerous substances."

Attentive eager nodding. "It'd be incredibly useful to us to be able to build robots here."

DZ signs to Deskyl; the woman sits up a little straighter and watches the assembled group more closely.

"We're a little concerned about that, actually." (She signs along as she speaks, now.) "Humans don't generally have much trouble finding different work if their jobs are taken over by robots; Amentans seem less flexible that way."

"Purples have been declining as a share of the population for many generations as fewer people are needed as farmers and so on, but we know how to keep it smooth and not crash the economy in the process."

"That still seems unpleasant for them. And we're especially concerned about the reds."

Amentans blink, nonplussed. "- you are?"

"Yes. They are people; several of Deskyl's powers let her be sure of that."

"Oh, we don't mean to say they - obviously they're members of our species."

"I mean that they're not different from you in any way that affects how you should treat them."

    (Should I be killing someone? Deskyl signs.

Not in particular, she signs back.)

(Greens are interested in that there sign language.)

"There've occasionally been suggestions that they could be phased out gently with a pension."

"That doesn't sound like something that they'd be satisfied with, any more than any other caste would be."

"Apparently humans solve this problem by not having a caste system, but that's really not feasible for Amenta."

She nods. "One solution would be to give them their own planet."

"If there's tens of millions of planets to go around -"

"They won't believe it, they'll torch all our houses while we sleep -"

"We do have an ongoing problem with reds being easily provoked to violence whenever anything they decide is their business changes in any way."

Are you sure I can't kill anyone?

    Not usefully. Do you want to take over?

Yeah, kinda.

    "They're people, they'll respond to threats the same as anyone - if they're backed into a corner, of course they'll lash out. Offer them the planet first."

"Until we can replace their labor it's absolutely essential that there be continuity of services, so they wouldn't be able to start moving out until we had robots ready to go."

    "Sure. But it sounds like they have good reason not to trust you, so you'll need the planet all ready for them first, before we start working on robotics at all. And that will work better logistically anyway; she knows more about robotics, it'll go much faster."

"The planet requires the faster than light ships. Are those generally feasible to manufacture and maintain without any robots?"

They confer.

    "It seems like you have the manufacturing base for it. There aren't many things that robots can do and biologicals can't."

"The ships are far more important anyway, assuming they aren't interdependent. What's Deskyl's recovery prognosis?"

"We expect her to recover completely, though it's hard to be sure of that. If she's left strictly alone, it might take as little as a few weeks, but again, it's hard to be sure; she's recovering from an attack by another Sith, and we're not actually sure what was done to her."

"Is there anything to be done that improves on leaving her alone?"

Signing. "Nothing substantial. I'll do what I can, though; it would be helpful to have funds to work with."

"Of course, we'll get you an account set up with some money for incidentals."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. We're happy to postpone everything else for a few weeks if you need to attend to Deskyl, or we can just have our conversations with you and let her rest, whichever works for you."

DZ signs to Deskyl; Deskyl considers the room for a moment before nodding.

    "I'll be available."

"We can email you a list of things people are curious about which don't require engineering."

She nods and gives them her account information.

And when she and Deskyl and lunch are all in their suite again, people want to know about Sith magic and about how and when droids are made and about all the tens of millions of planets and about their languages and about the kinds of polities they'll encounter when they're wandering the galaxy.

She answers! The common Sith powers are as she described in the meeting, and she goes into more detail about them; she also expands on Deskyl's personal powerset, explaining that she's a sensory specialist (the hearing problem is congenital for her; she'd patched it with a persistent Force effect, which the attack destroyed, and when she's recovered enough she'll be able to replace it; unfortunately she can only replicate the effect for other people when they're close to her) and can do some fancy things with lightning above and beyond the normal ability to throw bolts of it. Droids are made in factories, usually to a company's design but sometimes to a customer's specifications. She doesn't know about all of the tens of millions of planets, but she can tell them about the famous and important ones, and the Empire (Sith are totally greys, shading into blue at the upper ranks; Deskyl is a remarkably green one) and its ongoing war with the Republic (she makes a point of reassuring them that there's no reason at all to think that they're near the battlefront, or likely to be of interest to either side; if they were going to have that problem it would have happened already), and the general political situation between them and the Hutts (stay away from Hutts, seriously). She can produce translation dictionaries between Tapap and Basic and Tapap and Huttese, too, limited mostly by her typing speed.

The Tapai would like to know how they can make sure their colony planets are not of interest to the warring parties either, and what they're warring about, and the sign language Deskyl uses, and how long humans have been colonizing planets, and what other nifty technology might be available besides ships and robots.

Well, to understand the war they'll have to understand Sith culture, which - well, it's the kind of clusterfuck they'd use as a cautionary tale in blue schools, more or less. (She assures them that Deskyl is very pacifistic for a Sith.) Given that, the best way to avoid their attention is to avoid them; it should be relatively obvious when they start getting close, and then they can just stop expanding in that direction. Humans have been colonizing planets for all of known history; they aren't even sure what planet they originated on any more. Deskyl would prefer not to share her sign language at this time; it's not in common use, anyway. She can give lots more examples of technology, but points out that Deskyl's specialty is lightsabers, which aren't useful to anyone who isn't a trained Force-sensitive; there isn't very much that she can give them useful schematics on without taking the time to reinvent at least part of it.

They are so relieved to have got a pacifist Sith. Are the Empire and Republic expanding such that they might meander towards the Amentans on their own eventually? Are there polities they can safely make friends with?

The Empire has the Republic effectively surrounded, and is very focused on them; there's no way of knowing what will happen in a hundred years, but then, there hardly ever is. Her knowledge of other polities is unfortunately quite limited - aside from the big three they're generally too small to bother learning about unless you're working with them - but it's possible that they'll have friendly neighbors.

She looks up pocket everythings, and orders a pair of them that have their schematics available for Deskyl to compare to what they get.

Friendly purple brings up their package along with the next meal.

Signs of tampering?

Looks like it was sealed at the shipping facility and has been bumped around but not opened since.

Good.

DZ installs some extra security software, just in case, and sends Peka a message.

Hello again. We're in Iantep; Deskyl's resting a bit before we get started on spaceships, and they've agreed to wait until we have a planet lined up to start on robots. We have some money, too, how much do you need?

Rest of the credit is 3,000 tap. They're keeping you completely quiet, nobody's heard anything.

We can do 3,000 tap. And they haven't said anything about telling the public about us yet, I expect they'll at least wait until Deskyl is recovered.

There's a money transfer for 3,500 tap along with the message.

Thank you so much!!!

Thank you for helping us. It's a good thing you found us first - you should have seen the look on Deskyl's face when she found out just how bad things are for reds, and I doubt we would have found out on our own.

Do you mind if we keep in touch? We might have more questions for you.

I don't mind. I'm still stuck in the army so I might not always be able to answer fast.

Aww.

We've been keeping you a secret so far - they know we talked to a red, but not who - but if you don't need to be, we can ask about getting you out, if you want.

Depends if you can definitely convince them you'll be mad if I suddenly disappear.

Deskyl will definitely be mad if you suddenly disappear, I don't think it will be hard to convince them. We'll wait to tell them who you are until we're sure it's safe, though.

(She has a few changes of clothes delivered - all black - and an embroidery kit, and a few likely-looking books of poetry, and an art book full of photographs of sunsets from around the world.)

I'd rather be home with my baby now we don't desperately need the extra money.

She puts them away and messages the blues.

Would it be possible to arrange for the red who first found us to come home from her army posting? Deskyl is concerned that she'll end up near the fighting and be injured.

We'd need to know which one.

I'd like to make sure she won't be punished for not reporting us, first; she did that at our request and Deskyl will be upset if anything happens to her because of it.

Well, no harm done. We can just discharge her and leave it at that.

She forwards the exchange to Peka.

Does that look good enough to you?

Maybe make sure they know you'll be emailing me and stuff after.

That's a good idea, I'll make sure they know.

All right. Her name is Peka Atan; the one from Sampika.

We'll be keeping in touch with her; Deskyl will want to make sure she continues to be safe and well, and she seems like a useful person to consult on how reds will see different approaches to the transition to robots.

I've sent in the discharge order. An undertaker seems an odd choice for a consultant.

It's not that she's an undertaker, though the fact that her job will be one of the most directly affected doesn't hurt. But she in particular has met us and talked to us; she knows we care about what happens to her and that we're going to be careful about how we allow robots to be introduced, and it would be hard to build that kind of rapport with someone else.

Why is that necessary to quiz one on how they feel about robots?

It's necessary for useful collaboration. How they feel about robots is obvious; what we need to do to give you robots without making them feel threatened isn't.

Well, she'll be on her way home as soon as her unit has a replacement.

Thank you.

They're sending a replacement, you can go home as soon as they're there.

At some point I'm going to have to explain to these blues that just because Deskyl is a pacifist of a Sith doesn't mean it's safe to keep being stupid around her, wow.

Yeah, I got notice. They threatened dire consequences if I tell anybody there's aliens or anything but I go home tomorrow. Is she going to hurt people?

She's probably at least going to threaten to, honestly. Treating people like they aren't people really bothers her.

I mean they'll probably offer to hand over whoever offended her, since you can do planets and robots.

That'll limit the damage, at least.

Yeah

What do I have to do to not upset her

Oh, I don't expect you to have that problem with her at all. Her problem with the blues is that she's told them what she wants, and they're not doing it, and they're powerful enough that that looks like a threat to her - if she was working with another Sith, they'd end up attacking each other over things like that, so they're a lot more careful not to do them in the first place unless they mean to challenge each other. You and I can't really threaten her in the first place, so we can get away with a lot more, and she'll understand that it's a mistake instead of assuming it's a challenge.

What'd she tell them she wanted?

For them to start thinking of reds as people.

They'll probably do almost anything she wants but thinking nicely about it is different. She'd have about as much luck asking them to think of up as down.

Well, that's not going to go well for them, then. Maybe they'll figure out how to act like they think it, and that might be good enough, but right now they're not even close.

Blues aren't even the worst about it, I think, it's purples and greys.

Yeah, I haven't even told her about the greys yet, I don't know what she'll do about that.

You met some?

I've been reading things online.

Yeah the internet's a thing. There's red sites, but nobody sticks to them. Everything interesting's on the bigger sites.

Yeah. It's not hard to read between the lines if you know to, though.

Are there any sites I should be looking at?

Not sure what you're looking for.

It might be important to notice if the blues try to tell us something that's less obviously wrong than 'reds aren't people' or 'there's no reason to talk to them'. And if there's other things like the problems with the greys - I don't know if we'll be able to fix them, or if it's worth trying if that might slow us down on getting you a planet, but it might be important to know anyway.

If you mean red sites... I mean the red sites are social media stuff, it's more, "can anybody use my old couch", "whose turn is it to talk to the social worker"... is that useful?

It would be better than nothing. Why do you take turns with the social workers?

'Cause they suck.

Yeah, that's the sort of thing it's useful for us to know.

Well. Social workers suck. People are really casual about paying us and we aren't allowed to not show up to work for essential services. I couldn't do anything about the baby's dad if I wanted to. People hate us.

Maybe we will end up doing something about that. Deskyl's going to find it distracting, to say the least.

That's nice of her.

Yeah.

Are you doing okay otherwise?

You sent me extra! We're doing pretty good. I don't even have to get more work right away like this.

Good. We should be able to send more, too; I told the blues we were keeping in touch with you so we can ask about how to do the robot rollout, we can call it a consulting job.

Sneaky.

A little bit, yeah. Anyway, we don't know what kind of budget we're going to have once we're working, yet, so don't make any long-term plans, but do figure out how much you'll need in order to be comfortable, we'll want to know.

She sends a little chart of wages she could expect to pull at various red jobs.

She sends back a chart with consulting salaries for other castes.

Not that that's what I asked, anyway.

I don't super wanna explain to the social worker why I have new shoes but I guess I wouldn't have to spend it.

Wow. I don't even know what to say to that.

...why?

Why would they even ask that?

In case I stole the money or something.

Shoes aren't that expensive.

I know, but we usually take ones that were thrown out, and it'll be especially fishy if I have a baby and the social worker knows I didn't buy a credit before they were marked up for resale.

I suppose that makes sense. It's still pretty awful, though.

Social workers suck.

Yeah.

It seems like all the reasons Deskyl hates slavery are problems for you, too. I don't know what she's going to do about that but I bet she'll do something.

She hates specific things about it?

Yeah. She wants people to have lives that they like, that suit them; sometimes that just isn't possible, if there aren't enough resources to go around or someone wants or needs something that doesn't exist or whatever, but with slavery, and here, it would be possible, except there are people making it impossible.

They could be nicer but they can't let us just go places and touch stuff.

They could let you buy shoes without giving you trouble about it, though. And make sure you get paid, and let you take time off of work for things like everyone else.

Individual vacation time we can do, we just have to make sure somebody shows up.

I guess that's not as bad as it could be.

It varies. I think Rivik's supposed to be worst.

I'll look them up. Later, not right now.

Tapa seems bad enough, anyway. Even if it's not the worst place.

It's not great anywhere. I think Voans are supposedly happier. In general but including reds. Maybe less now that there's the war.

I've mostly been reading about Tapa; what's Voa like?

They do child allocations two per. Instead of credits. Which is supposedly the reason they're happier.

That sounds like it would help, yes.

It's supposedly dysgenic but I don't know.

Even if it is, people getting what they need matters.

If there's enough planets they might stop doing population controls anymore at all.

I expect they'll have trouble if they don't, with as many planets as there are.

They might need something for caste balance but yep. We'll fill it right up.

Yep!

I should get back to my reading now, but send me a message if you need anything, okay?

Will do!

And Deskyl rests and recuperates. Near the end of the first week, she has DZ put in an order for a selection of basic electrical components and a table that will let her work in bed; in the middle of the third, they send off a list of experiments they'd like to have done to supplement what Deskyl remembers about how nuclear fusion based power generators work.

The Tapai are quick and solicitous about meeting these requests. Tools arrive promptly; they get status reports on the physics experiments as they progress.

The first results are promising; Deskyl writes up a basic outline of how to build a generator, with notes on how various experimental results will change the details, and which results mean they need to talk to her again to figure out what's gone wrong.

She starts spending time out of bed, slowly at first, but by the middle of the second month she's up and about enough that DZ asks for the second bed to be replaced with a worktable, and for details on how to arrange sparring sessions.

(DZ keeps in touch with Peka, too, checking in with her at least once a week.)

Peka keeps DZ supplied with happy baby pictures, occasionally with her little brother and/or sister in there too.

The furniture is replaced. They have a selection of people who know swordfighting and have enough military or police or government security history to have a clearance compatible with telling them about aliens; if Deskyl has a fighting style preference here are some videos of their specialties.

The furniture replacement itself goes fine, but Deskyl reacts badly to it, spending a week in bed and returning slowly to her previous level of activity; DZ talks her out of sparring for now.

Well, they haven't told any of the swords greys about aliens yet, so no rush.

And she continues to recover. The next set of notes she releases is about enhanced and specially treated metals; Amentans don't have durasteel, and she doesn't know how it's made, but some of what she knows should work on the regular sort.

She picks a sparring partner - someone who knows lots of styles, rather than a specialist in some particular one - and has DZ arrange a sparring session; DZ includes a note that for now they should be prepared for the sessions to be very short.

That's fine! The selected swords grey shows up. He's a little apprehensive about the high stakes of sparring with an alien but he's got his own share of the excitement about planets.

She's less creeped out by the enthusiasm by now. She keeps it low-stakes, this time, showing him a few two-person forms she wants to practice on rather than going right to actual sparring, with DZ there to translate.

Sure, he can pick those up and partner them even though they're not like what he's used to.

And when they've gone through the forms, she shows him the basics of the style she wants to practice - she's interested in learning about local styles; he doesn't need to pick it up himself - and leaves DZ to arrange a schedule while she goes back to bed.

Once a week should be more than sufficient for now, if that works well for him; Deskyl will want to work up to at least three times a week and possibly daily, though.

Once a week and scaling up works fine!

Good.

This arrangement seems to suit her; she takes a day or so to recover from sparring sessions, at first, but she spends an increasing portion of the rest of her time going through textbooks and research papers on the state of the art in various types of Amentan technology, releasing notes on them that range in detail from 'work on this' on hydroponics, to specific if somewhat vague hints on how to improve their metal refining practices, to a blueprint for an improved braking system for trains, to a fascinating if somewhat hard to follow paper on how spacetime knots can be harvested from black holes and used to make anti-gravity technology.

Eventually, she asks for another meeting with the blues.

They are available as soon as she wants them!

As soon as is convenient for them.

Right away works!