Velke hadn't seemed pleased with the stipulations on the nanobot vials, even with Sofia's diplomatic attempt to tell him it was a trial run. The Fakra liaison suggested the Marshal—who we hadn't met in person for "safety" reasons due to our abilities—wanted to pay Corai a visit in person; he had half a mind to travel through their Gap and confront the Elusians. I assured him that was a natural next step, now that our alliance was set in stone.

The Fakra deserved a chance to face their creators, but as I told Velke, we wanted humanity looped into the picture as quickly as possible—like they wanted the tools to cross a portal at once. The chitinous Commander returned to shepherd a proper ambassador to Earth, who they planned to have stay at an outright embassy; there'd been talks about that for the Vascar, but the lack of eager participants to live among organics had stalled those efforts.

"So it was this simple for them to hand us a vial, and we could pass through a portal." Velke had a quaver in his voice, no doubt apprehensive at the possibility of ending up comatose. He didn't have a whole lot of faith in Elusian tech saving him. "Why didn't they?! Abandoning us was that much easier?"

"My creators caused our minds to collapse in on themselves if we felt love, and tried to wipe us off the face of Kalka during our slave rebellion. I wish they abandoned us," Mikri remarked.

"How is that helpful insight, robot?!"

"Yours simply did not care: this is the logical conclusion. Mine hated us. You learned a lot from the Elusians and were permitted a continued existence."

"How gracious. I suppose you think we should be thanking them!"

"No. However, understanding the contextual variables of a similar situation offers room for comparison. I find it helpful to appreciate what I do have, rather than what I do not. To focus on the negatives is to allow your suffering to define you. The Fakra are taking this step now, and will be more afterward. Find conviction in shaking your chains."

"Okay, Shakegeare, enough of the sonnets," I scolded the android. "To beep or not to beep: that's the question."

Mikri placed his palm over his chest, commanding the spotlight. "What's in a name? That which we call a Preston by any other word would smell as repugnant. I cannot smell, and yet I feel like I can around you."

"Velke's gotta smell worse. He has double the armpits!"

The Fakra's beak almost seemed to frown. "Interacting with you makes me question how you're the Elusians' chosen ones, Preston. I…do wear deodorant, you know. It exists."

"Ignore Preston's doofus comments, Commander. I had to tell him not to broadcast that we're the Ghost of Christmas Past when we pop up above Earth," Sofia grumbled. "I recognize that humor might relieve the tension, but I just hope this all goes well. I don't know why the Elusians didn't help you before, because we're…not them."

"We know that they merely cloned a new puppet. Our puppetry is a wonderful art—four arms, as Captain Carter so astutely mentioned. Perhaps we could host a show on Earth. That feels odd to say…to hope we could touch another society."

"To make that a reality, we all have to take a leap of faith. There's uncertainty for us too.

Velke's pale red eyes focused on her. "Yes, I am aware. Even when you've seen some interesting things, you don't let fear stop you. That Elusian, Corai; you're right. She is a curious one."

"Don't you know it's impolite to spy on people on the first date?" I demanded.

"When they're working with your mortal enemy, is it? I wasn't that secretive. If there's really no secrets in how you're handling us, then it shouldn't be a problem."

"The only 'problem' is that we'll need to be fully secretive contacting Sol," Sofia stated. "Mikri is right. We're both shaking off our chains, and that's a huge victory. Neither of us will be alone anymore."

"Yes, the days of being alone are over. You will never have another second to yourself!" Mikri raised an enthusiastic claw, sidling up to me like a big koala. "I am impossible to get rid of…peacefully."

"How wonderful. Robot, you have a way of making me want these nanites to end me." Velke slapped the injector on his upper left arm, and squeezed his eyes shut. He blinked them back open, scratching at several parts of his skin like that'd get at the nanites crawling beneath. "Lirik, you ready?"

The nervous diplomat chittered in agreement.

The Commander strapped himself into his harness, sucking in several sharp breaths. "Right, time to die. Tell our people to hit the switch. If I don't wake back up, kill that Elusian bitch for me."

"Jambalaya," Mikri agreed.

I watched with keen eyes as the Fakra flipped the switch on their preparations, despite being the least sciency human ever to wear an astronaut suit. Massive teleportation field generators faced in a circular pattern and converged their tunnels' paths on one point; the same method as us, despite having a million years to get it down. Drilling a hole through 5D space with a controlled collision just worked, and from there, it had to be stopped from resealing with negative energy.

The Fakra must know how to generate negative energy, though, if they have this large of a supply without the Elusians. If they'd pass that knowledge on to humanity, we'd be able to craft our own portals at will. We wouldn't be reliant on anyone else! That is freedom.

The nanobots must have had some fuckery…from the proximity to the 5D portals, the Fakra's brain waves, or the ship's telemetry bringing us closer…to gauge when we were near entry. Velke and Lirik slumped over like they'd been shot, eyes rolling back in their heads. Mikri stared at them with concern; it was the first time he'd seen any organic on our side…technically dead, at least in person. The robot quietly hugged Sofia, who petted his mane with affection.

As the pilot, I gunned it through the newly-opened portal, not wanting to chance how long the delay was on the Fakra waking up. The usual clusterfuck kaleidoscope of photons swirled around us: it was a cone of light that was like a screwdriver wedged behind my eyeballs, a blizzard that passed through skin and bone like it wasn't there to batter my brain with hailstones, and a summer breeze of nothingness that stretched out longer than Larimak's torture all in one. A trillion possibilities cramming themselves into my hippocampus.

Then, as it always did, the maw of eternity spit us out and the world returned to its normal self—transit half-remembered, beyond the feeling of a few neurons still baking under its weight. Mikri smiled as he glimpsed Earth's majesty out the window; the Vascar seemed happy to return to humanity's homeworld. We'd had a good time on our trip. When Bighead promised to return us, he probably thought he'd never have access to our society or contact with our species again.

"Velke?" Sofia prompted, jostling the Fakra's shoulder slightly; his body gave way at her touch, like any corpse. "We need to make sure this worked. We're going to have a major diplomatic crisis on our hands, not to mention…blood on our conscience, if it doesn't."

I unbuckled my harness and walked over to inspect the lifeless aliens. "Did Corai play us? Just when I was starting to trust her, she set us up with faulty nanobots. An Elusian never let the Fakra travel—"

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Velke and Lirik's eyes snapped open, sharp breaths sucking in deep breaths of air like they were drowning. The Fakra commander's hands shot out to grab the first shadow in his sight, which happened to be me. My skin crawled, and I barely made myself stand still rather than jump away. His pupils took several seconds to refocus as he got his bearings; his skeletal fingers relaxed around my shirt.

"What a wretched out-of-body experience it is, to have only the last remnants of your consciousness…floating away. To see your life flash before your eyes like a song's fading chorus." The alien blinked several times, before returning to his normal demeanor and ambling toward the window. "I shudder to think I'll have to do that again to go back. I'm half-tempted to stay here, like Lirik. The Elusians normalized that?! Fuck's sake."

Mikri lowered his claws; I hadn't noticed the android ready to strike, after Velke grabbed me. "Your instinct was to attack Preston. That will not happen again."

"Velke was panicking; he literally got zapped back to life and thrown into survival mode. I think he can get a pass," I offered, with a disapproving click of my tongue to the robot. "Lay off. You don't need to gut anyone who looks at us wrong—context matters."

"Disagreed. Actions matter. Why is a concern for after, especially when they threaten you with immediate harm. I react, with my sole intention being the avoidance of negative outcomes."

"Hmph. You put the 'butt' in rebuttal, tin can."

"Maybe we should send out a message to the ESU now, before they get any bright ideas about launching missiles at us?" Sofia interjected. "We just appeared in orbit above the human homeworld, after everything that happened with the Elusians. Lirik, Velke, are you ready?"

The quiet Fakra diplomat, still disoriented from death's hand, gave a click of agreement. "Yes. Commander, are you good?"

"Of course. I've been ready for this my whole adult life." Velke stared out the window at Earth with tears welling in his eyes, admiring the ebbs of its continents. "This view is remarkable, Dr. Aguado. The first planet we've never seen before. It means a great deal to my people to be in another dimension."

"It means a lot to us that you helped us get home. I believe we can do spectacular things together," Sofia responded with her usual aplomb. "Let's send a transmission toward ESU headquarters and hope we get a quick response."

Mikri whirred in protest. "There's no need. I already hacked into 267 military and governmental channels to give us full control. I also took the liberty of putting a 'gif' of myself hula hooping on Takahashi's screen, so the general may already have caught on that it's me."

"What was the logical reasoning for that?!"

"I did not want them to shoot us. This may provide merit for the necessity of further investigation. I will play your transmission on their screens when ready."

The scientist muttered several words under her breath, before going along with it and switching on her camera. "This is Dr. Aguado and Captain Carter returning home. Sorry for the fright, I'm sure the airspace around Earth is touchy right now. If you're reading me, please respond."

A video call request on ESU military channels came in, and I saw a disgruntled Takahashi scowling at us. "Where's Mikri?"

"Hi, Takahashi boobear!" the android exclaimed, pushing his way into the picture and doing the heart gesture with his claws. "I missed you!"

"Do you think it's a game to hack half of the military systems on Earth?!"

"Humans always understand me so well. This is why I love you, and you love me. I have big computing power energy."

"Please shoot them down," Velke commented.

Takahashi's facial expression changed, becoming skeptical and concerned. "Who was that? Come forward."

Sofia leaned out of the way, allowing Velke to mosey over. I could see the general's microexpressions, from the tightening of her jaw muscles to the unyielding focus of her eyes; the bizarre-looking Fakra definitely had raised some alarms. Her spiel at Mikri had been like a dog's barking, giving a loud show of strength and challenge without any true ferocity beneath. I shuffled forward, in the hopes of defending the Commander before he faced any inane accusations.

"These are our friends, the Fakra. They helped us get home by drawing up a pretty portal, since access to Sol was closed," I explained. "They want to be our allies and have every reason to aid us. The Fakra were Elusian creations before humanity, which is why they look a bit quirky. Our gray overlords gave up on the experiment millions of years ago, calling Velke's people a failure and leaving them to die."

Velke waved a bony hand, looking uncertain. "How do you do, General? We haven't done this diplomacy stuff before, but we share a common enemy. We've been isolated in our dimension for millions of years until your astronauts came along, and thought we might never get out. We'd hate to see humans languish the same way. Elusian whims are as fickle as the wind."

"Exactly, which is why we contacted the Fakra! They can give us a back door out of Sol. Sofia and I have been working to gather allies, to help us escape and be an interdimensional power again."

Takahashi offered a silent, smoldering glare, then slammed a hand on her desk. "Are you kidding me, Captain Carter? It's not in Earth's best interest to challenge the Elusians. Do you know what they said at the Space Gate, when they rounded us up like vermin?"

"Uh, live long and prosper."

"No, goddammit. They said, 'Further attempts to meddle in our affairs and to exit your pocket dimension will result in permanent consequences.' I have those words burned into my brain. When the Elusians catch us doing…whatever this scheme you've cooked up demands, they will kill us all. I want to keep us safe, and if that means we're prisoners, so be it. At least we exist."

"But they won't catch us. They abandoned the Fakra a long time ago. This gives us a backup plan if they do try anything, because they won't notice."

"Why risk it? There's no reason to take the chance of angering them—"

"Because they're going to kill us eventually anyway, if we don't convince them that we aren't a threat," Sofia answered, distress on her face. "The Elusians stopped our ship after The Tunnel test, intending to experiment on us both and send us back. A sect of rogue Elusian scientists saved us, disagreeing with their government's position and telling us…everything."

General Takahashi's eyes glistened with intrigue. "Go on."

"The Elusians created us because they were bored, and wanted an equal who could rival their interdimensional knowledge. They wanted us to struggle and evolve naturally—we now know because they tried the opposite way with the Fakra. At any rate, the Elusians learned about our precog and tried to look at the future with their machines."

"They couldn't see any Elusians in the future: only humans. That's why they don't want us going interdimensional. They think we're going to usurp them and knock them off," I stated.

"Organics who believe you are a threat are a high probability to become a threat themselves," Mikri beeped. "Disproving the notion that you are behind this elimination would protect humans from future preemptive strikes, and may cause the Elusians to rescind their position."

Sofia nodded in emphatic agreement. "The future is dark, General, and I speak from precog. We have to change it; we have to at least know more. We wanted Earth to be involved in the planning."

"With the Fakra in contact, we can help each other and not be alone anymore. What was done to them is horrible." I gave Velke a sympathetic glance over my shoulder, before clearing my throat. "Humans don't give up. I speak from experience: precog is easy to misinterpret, and maybe we can show the Elusians that. But if not…"

Takahashi's eyes gleamed. "Yes, Captain Carter?"

"Corai—that's our contact—will give us their technology. Like this, these are raisers." I pointed to the metal bands on my wrist, before levitating a few baubles for show. "When I land, I'll give these to you for R&D to reverse engineer. Beyond just making life better on Earth and being invaluable discoveries, Elusian tech gives us a chance to level the playing field and defend ourselves. We don't want to be at their mercy forever."

"Hang on a second. These Elusian scientists will give us their technology?"

"Exactly. All their fancy gizmos in our possession. If we have the same tools, we're stronger than them. That much is obvious."

Takahashi straightened, seeming to come to some decision. "The ESU will have to discuss it, but it sounds like we need to have a chat with this Corai. It could be…worthwhile. Why don't you touch down at Toronto HQ, and we'll exchange sentiments with the Fakra? It sounds like they could use some hospitality."

"Totally. I'd like it very much if we could be…brothers. They've been through a lot, so this is really a milestone for their civilization."

"It is. We would be honored to join your people," Lirik said, finally overcoming the tongue-tied nerves. "To see an alien society and walk your stones would mean a lot. It was my hope that I could serve as an ambassador between our pocket dimensions."

"We welcome new allies, especially at a time where we've been cut off from our former friends. I'm eager to learn more about the Fakra." The general smiled, adjusting the camera. "A parting word for Captain Carter and Doctor Aguado?"

I arched an eyebrow. "Shoot."

"Welcome home."

Those words made me feel warm and fuzzy, to hear the stoic general admit some fondness for us. It felt like getting through to Mikri all over again. Takahashi disconnected from the call, and landing coordinates were received moments later. With that interaction under our belts, a Fakra-human alliance was now officially under way. It was up to us to show Velke around Earth, then to hear what the next part of Corai's master plan was.

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