Chapter 116

Dear Willow and Family,

I got a few minutes to read your letter recently, and I have to say that after Ensign O'Mally got out his e-reader and started looking through human books on how to navigate around the galaxy the Aer Lingus' AI got a lot more cooperative. Our methods might be a bit primitive by the standards of the Confederacy, but we were sure we could find our way back to Tellus-At (we said that just to see if the AI was at all historically literate about humanity) if necessary.

I don't think they care if we fight the Sa'arm so long as we remain dependent on them to get us to and from the fight. I expect that as long as they don't have to actually think about pulling the trigger so that they cause death of a possibly sentient (though from your description I'm not sure how they classify the Sa'arm as sentient) being. That they would prefer us not to know how to get around the galaxy is undoubtedly true. The thing is I can't blame them for their paranoia. We are at least as dangerous as our closest companions and worst enemies.

If you don't understand that last then I'll just say that just as men made dogs, so to have dogs made men. And that started before either species made a symbiotic pact (even if it has never been written down) to live together and cooperate on making the world safer for those wolves who threw their lot in with us.

So as I said we know the direction we need to travel to get home. What we would like to do (though we really aren't sure that the AI will tell us the truth about it) is explore the anomaly that sent us here. We now know the signature radiation to look for and we have found a ready source of fuel for the Aer Lingus, though that shouldn't be necessary unless we have to take several hyperspace hops to get back.

However we still have to take time to tune our drive engines as that is part of the reason (at least that is what the AI tells us) that we got caught in the anomaly. That is that they were operating at an incorrect frequency. The question we have is: is that a dangerous frequency, and if not can we reliably recreate the results that brought us to where we are now?

I have other work to do, including tracking down what appears to be an anomalous 'ping' or echo that should not be out here. It almost sounds like it is coming from another ship built by the Confederacy. If we weren't here I'd say that is impossible. But we are here and while I must keep this note short I shall say that the longer we are here the deeper the mysteries get in some ways. This note will go out with the next info packet the AI sends, but I don't know when you'll get it...

Your brother,

Will Murphy, Signifer