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Jinye Attani Cocoon plots to conquer the Expanse.
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Jinye Attani Cocoon has just had her face changed. She doesn't know what to think of the few face, yet; it isn't really hers, it's Ajian Madurai's. Ajian Madurai, two inches taller than Jinye (which ought to provide some realistic clumsiness, until she adjusts), Ajian Madurai, who wears glasses (and, though this has not been permanently changed, needs to wear glasses), Ajian Madurai who has darker skin and a just slightly different facial shape, enough that not one of Jinye's classmates will notice her.

She doesn't know what ship she's being transported in, but she knows the door to her cabin is locked and she knows where she's going. Varayapoli, the Shield, Tsirona, the Grannus system. A minor imperial possession. There she goes with forty-three of her schoolmates, the forty-three that didn't drop out, to die for the Attani Empire. And - to battle, to scheme, to rule. She had her homework all prepared, mnemonic tricks for making even her extraordinary memory better; her brain is stuffed with Tsironan manners - the commanders of all the Attani divisions - system vulnerabilities in military software - she can picture elements of her inevitable victory in her head, but so much will depend on the next six months; on whether Kion is viceroy, on where Siro lands, on just who her most brilliant rivals choose to be.

(She misses Siro. She wasn't expecting it to be this bad, but she misses him. Well, they can get in touch as soon as she touches down.)

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The Cor Leonis is a 150-meter nineteenth-generation escort frigate equipped with a third-generation antigravity compensator and modern weaponry, and her captain does know just what she is transporting, making Jinton-ji Su Maurya Veninheim one of the very few people in the Empire in on the secret of exactly where its new rulers come from. Her purpose is to quietly collect Jinye Attani Cocoon from the minor mining base that is (off-the-books) a corporate research facility working on optimizing illegal gambling software and (further off the books) is Cocoon Academy, and take her to Tsirona. For this purpose, the Cor Leonis is passing through the wormhole connecting Al Afthar to Cheleb. One fortified station is visible on the Al Afthar side, one fortified station is visible on the Cheleb side, both keeping the wormhole balanced and open - no difficulties visible - 

The Cor Leonis passes through the wormhole and both stations, with accompanying systems, vanish. Or, from a very different point of view, the Cor Leonis does, instead.

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From yet another point of view, something emerges from Ring #802 that is definitely not supposed to be there.

The Cor Leonis exits the wormhole via a structure their engineers might recognize as a wormhole station, if they had to speculate on its function, but it looks like nothing like an Attani wormhole-station, nor indeed anything they would know to be built by humans at all. It's an enormous ring, wide enough to fit a hundred Corda Leonum abreast, and it opens onto a space encompassed by similar rings in a rough spherical pattern a million kilometers across. At the center (too far away to be seen with the naked eye, but presumably they have scopes) is a spherical object of similar alien make to the rings, and near that, what looks like an ancient generation ship, clearly parked there, with weapons attached to it that it almost certainly was not originally meant to have.

On board that former generation ship, now called Medina Station, an OPA sentry is roused from his half-slumber by an alarm. Unauthorized transit of Ring #802. Oh well, the Belt is still kind of getting used to the whole having laws thing. Still, he shouldn't ignore it, even if it is just some kids who thought it would be fun to fly dark around the unexplored trans-Ring systems.

He sends them a radio message, which won't be according to any communications protocols they know, but it's not encrypted or anything; if they have the expectation that it's audio, they should be able to decipher it without too much trouble.

"Unidentified vessel transiting Ring 802. Please state your name, affiliation, and flight plan." Technically it's illegal to enter the Ring Space without a transponder on but he's not going to bring that up. Yet.

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When they cross, Jinye is quietly copying, from best memory, the contents of a virus intended to fill her new Tsironan bank account into her handheld, and while she does casually looking at Central Computing's avatar, which sits in the corner, quietly reading.

"So, I assume there's no news that Ajian Madurai should have, yet?"

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The cheerful, young Adjutant avatar smiles and begins to shake his head.

"Not as of y-"

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His childlike face withers in an instant.

"Emergency stations, Jinye, 23ce."

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"Code yellow," says Su. "All stations, code yellow." 

(To the station's eye, the Cor Leonis starts twitching, accelerating in random directions at erratic-but-rapid intervals.)

"Ilton-ji Shu, ready rapid evasion. Telton-ji Vora, Recalibrate sensors," says Su, her every nerve suddenly alive and her voice still completely calm. "I want to know what's really out there. Ilton-ji Maien, comms update?"

The lieutenant's response was not quite as steady, but not far off. "Unencrypted radio, Jinton-ji, unfamiliar accent. Source is the station."

"Play it for me."

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Jinye has seen Teacher looking this old exactly never. The code yellow flashes across the ship and there's no immediate response.

Situation 23: The ship has been teleported through an unknown Gate. It's theoretically impossible according to standard models of physics but you'd only need to one theorized law to be wrong for opening a Gate an inch inside another Gate to be possible. The obvious reason for a hijacking is so Jinye, Jinye's genes, Jinye's knowledge, and the chip inside Jinye's head can fall into the possession of a hostile galactic power.

There is a series of acceptable responses ranging from attempting to destroy as much as possible of this with welding equipment to hiding under the bed, and there is also the response she does take, included in the list she was encouraged but not mandated by Central Computing to take, which is to pull out her pocketknife, flip its screwdriver attachment open, and get to work on her cabin door's inside control panel.

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There is no immediate response from the Attani ship, other than the odd, almost reactionless twitching it makes.

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What the actual fuck is that ship doing. And more importantly, how.

Obviously you couldn't twitch like that with your main drive (which the ship doesn't appear to be using), but even thrusters have pretty distinctive heat signatures, and the scopes aren't showing anything like that either. (They don't have good enough resolution to actually get a good look at the ship, or it would be much more obvious that it wasn't built by any humans the OPA knows.)

—it occurs to him that the ship's strange behavior might make tactical sense if it were expecting a hail of PDC fire that is not in fact incoming. The fact that they moved to this stance immediately pretty much banishes the possibility of it being random Belter kids and is also, separately, concerning, insofar as it reveals something their expectations for this encounter.

He fires off a highest-priority ping to the captain. It's the middle of the night shift and she's going to be pissed if this turns out to be nothing but the chances of that, right now, seem vanishingly small.

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Camina Drummer is woken by a repeating pattern of three sharp pings from her hand terminal. She disentangles herself from Michio, who's stirring beside her, stands up, and clears the sleep from her eyes before answering.

"This better be fucking important," she says in a low, even voice.

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"Rogue ship out of one of the Rings. Flying totally dark but it seems to have adopted what I can only guess is a combat stance. Hasn't answered my hail.

"I think you're gonna want to see this for yourself."

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"Copy intense-scan," says Telton-ji Astra Vora Suiban. She's been staring at her scanners and checking and rechecking both sides of the gate, and - 

"Intense-scan complete," she says. "Reports are accurate. We are where we seem to be, Jinton-ji."

Emperor's ass, thinks the ship's captain. If we're being kidnapped, the least they could do would be to tell us why.

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The door to Jinye's cabin swings open. The two marines guarding her spin; one of them backs up a stage, the other turns towards her. FThe first's hand needler has left its holster but is pointed down, the second has a lightning gun readied. Neither is wearing full Attani battle armor, just the Empire's standard bullet-resistant uniforms.

"Override 7783," says Jinye, inventing out of whole cloth. (They blink.) "Take me to the bridge."

"I don't -"

"Your captain does. Take me to her."

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(Central Computing's avatar, now back to Adjutant, smirks at Jinye in passing. Describing her as 'his favorite student' would be to anthromorphize him far too much, but his expected future utility is much higher because she exists.)

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The marines at the bridge part, and the door swings open to admit Jinye.

"What are you doing on the bridge, cadet?"

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Jinye takes it all in, with one glance at the bridge, one look at the station, one stare at where we are, and one goddamned fast smile. She raises her hand, waits for the captain to fall silent while she thinks.

"Jinton-ji," she says, very calmly. "That is not any design of any ship we know." The more obvious things she says, the more time she has to think. "Do you really want to be the one who manages first contact?"

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Oh goddamn it.

She isn't supposed to do this, ever - she types in an emergency alert code, glances down at the screen that folds out of the arm of her command chair.

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Central Computing flashes on to her screen.

"An Attani decision, Jinton-ji. Not for me to make."

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"To be made by Jinye Attani Cocoon, then."

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"Jinye Attani Attani," she says. "Let's not spill any state secrets, shall we? Play the message again."

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By the time Drummer's dressed and at the station, the message she hears is a calm, "This is Attani Imperial frigate Cor Leonis, commanded by Shoi Shaogen-ji Jinye Attani Attani. Identify yourself, unknown station."

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Back on Medina Station—

What—no, there'll be time for questions when the chance of them all dying is firmly back to its background level of "surrounded by vacuum in an alien dimension no one actually understands".

She throws on a uniform and makes her way to the bridge as fast as possible. It still takes a few minutes.

—she takes a look at the scopes and is no longer upset about being woken up in the middle of the night. Jules-Pierre Mao is presumably rotting in a hole at the bottom of a gravity well, but the technology behind his infamous stealth fleet now belongs to Earth, and if they've somehow managed to launch a surprise attack on the Ring Space, well, the OPA is not prepared. She'd been counting on the fact that no one on Earth seemed to realize that the Ring Space was now the strategic chokepoint of human civilization, but the chances of that ignorance lasting long enough for the Belt to get Medina properly defended were always questionable.

"Tightbeam to Fred Johnson, now," she says to the computer, which duly awaits her message.

"Attack on Ring Space by unknown stealth forces presumably UN," she dictates at a rapid clip. "Likely outmatched no plans to surrender requesting available backup."

Now that she at least might be avenged if they all die in the next five minutes, she turns to the sentry. "Any communications from them since you pinged me?"

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He plays the message.

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The what commanded by who.

If it were the UN in disguise, probably they'd come up with a less bizarre cover story? But, then again, maybe that's exactly what they expected her to think. Her mind isn't exactly coming up with a lot of other possibilities here. If it were literal actual aliens, they wouldn't speak English. With, she thinks, a lot of Chinese in there? And the ship's name might be Latin—Earther languages weren't her specialty.

"This is Commander Camina Drummer of Medina Station," she replies. "Outer Planets Alliance, Sol system," she adds, just in case it is somehow aliens. "I've never heard of the faction you just mentioned. My current assumption is that you're hostile UN or Martian forces, possibly some kind of stealth black ops. You have a rather short time to make any other explanation seem remotely plausible before we fire."

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"The alternate explanation is that this is first recontact, Medina Station. Our homeworld was colonized from Earth centuries ago," and has resettled its still-smoking ruins, "and do you really want to be the woman whose biography, read ten thousand years later, reads, 'met foreign-divergent civilization, then murdered its representatives?' If you want to shoot me you'll be in just as good a position to do it in an hour, after your reinforcements have arrived."

And, dropping out of communications, she turns to the captain. "Get me a complete scan of that station's weapons and a firing solution that will shut them down, but don't use it unless I give an explicit command. I don't want to have to fight this thing," even if she'd dodge all its shots and cut it to pieces, sitting duck that it is, "and if it wants to fight us I'd rather shut it down as painlessly as possible."

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